I Left my Pork in Barcelona
I’d say the elevator was roughly 3 feet wide by 4 feet long. Not the kind of place you’d want to spend a lot of time. That’s why I had to whip out my skills and get us out of there.
It went down like this – we were visiting Barcelona´s main cathedral and decided that we really should see the roof. I don’t know why, but it felt right. First of all, Barcelona is a beautiful city, and I had wanted to get a bird´s eye view (instead of a bar’s eye view) of the whole shebang since we arrived. Second of all, though not a religious person whatsoever, I am a sucker for the whole “these really tall religious buildings are tall so that you get closer to God” thing. So up we went.
The view from the roof was fantastic, and we spent maybe twenty minutes up there, gazing off in all directions, inhaling the goodness of Barcelona. Sun was shining, birds were singing, and the alcohol that was in me from the night before was slowly making its way through my pores to evaporate into the warm Spanish air. My wife Sanna, my good friend Lenny and I were chirping and laughing and grooving, completely enjoying our little adventure. We were also getting a bit hungry, so the conversation turned to lunch. With that, we started to exit the building (or the top of it, I guess) via the elevator. That’s where the fun began.
Elevators in Europe are, as a rule, smaller than those in the States. And those that are not are dark and mirror-free, creating the sensation of being quite small. But that doesn’t stop people from cramming into them. I have yet to encounter a situation where the most responsible member of the elevator group whips out a calculator, figures the combined weight of the to-be passengers, and then starts kicking out the fatties. The signs always read something like: MAXIMUM WEIGHT: 700 or 8 PERSONS. 700 what? 8 Samoans? Does that mean 16 little people? Who the hell knows.
Anyhow, in we crammed and buttons we pushed. There were seven of us in total. Six of us were about “average” for our genders and ages, but we did have one Eastern-European-looking man with us, who seemed to be, well… he was large. I don’t care how short you think the trip is going to be, seven people in a tight space for more than two seconds is a bit imposing. In some ways, riding in an elevator is a bit like pissing in a urinal: eye contact is generally avoided, time doesn’t exactly fly by, the smell is not always pleasant, and simulated wood grain/tiling/wall details suddenly become of great interest. Anything to avoid having unnecessary conversation or be caught looking at the wrong body part. Get in, get out. That’s pretty much the deal.
The ride to the ground floor was pretty painless. The elevator even came to a fairly smooth stop upon arrival. The thing that usually happens next (i.e. the doors open and everybody rushes out) didn’t. The doors did not open. Nobody rushed out. A few moments of awkward silence went by and then I muttered out loud, “Um, this isn’t good.” I looked at Sanna, and could see that the worry was already building. I glanced at Lenny to see that he was busy sizing up the other passengers. He later told me that he was trying to figure out whom he was going to eat first, should this be a lengthy delay.
It certainly felt like the fresh air went stale about 60 years ago, and I didn’t feel that an emergency ventilation system was about to kick in. Looking up, I noticed that this particular model didn’t seem to have one of those square little escape doors, meaning that my dreams of pulling a Mission Impossible were quickly deflated. Honestly, I had been looking for my chance to climb out of an elevator-ceiling door and scale the shaft to fetch help, saving my fellow passengers from the ticking bomb that had been placed in the elevator’s floor panels. Without that escape hatch, though, this bomb was surely to blow.
Sanna started pushing those little buttons on the control panel, most interested in the one that had a little picture of a bell on it. One of the first lifts ever made, this one had no red emergency phone that went straight to the Bat Cave. The great thing about the button with the bell on it is that it worked. It produced a bell, all right, but nothing like the alarm signals that you see in the movies. No, this one was a little undulating vibration of noise, sort of like one of those wind-up kitchen timers that continues to sound after time runs out, slowly dying away until its last tick. I was damn certain that the bell was for our enjoyment only, and was not sending a locator GPS signal to our soon-to-be-rescuers. But we pushed and we pushed, and while we did so, the other members of this train wreck were starting to sweat. I could smell it.
At some point we started knocking on the door and yelling. In a claustrophobic situation of panic, perhaps the worst thing to do is start knocking on things and yelling. But I’ll be damned if my parents were going to receive the long distance call explaining that their son, his wife and their friend suffocated to death in a tiny Barcelona elevator. Calm down, ma’am… They had completely devoured the other passengers, so they didn’t die hungry… Suddenly, we heard the muffled sounds of someone knocking back! We had been trapped in this elevator for like 182 seconds or something, and finally, FINALLY, our rescue squad had been dispatched!
Sort of. I mean, there was just a little knocking from the outside world, and then we would knock and yell and kick and scream (all of this to the delight of the overweight Eastern European man, whose bullets of sweat made huge sloshing sounds as they hit the floor. I had turned giddy with the thrill of danger, while his heart slowly went into attack mode.) And then the knocking from the other side again… This cacophony went on like some sort of Gypsy musical number, clanging and clonking and buzzing and yapping for another several hours. (Please be advised that some details of this ordeal, including the time frame, are still very fuzzy. What seemed like several hours to my weakened and anxious soul may have actually been about four minutes. But who wants to read about a four-minute elevator ordeal? Exactly.)
At some point I realized that another super-human trick that was occasionally performed in the movies to escape from certain elevator death was the old “prying open the doors with your bare hands” maneuver. Eureka! At least if I don’t succeed, the others would talk about me in their dying breaths, asking me to bless their children and maybe even give me candy. Additionally, when it comes down to who’s getting eaten first, the guy who’s trying to bust us outta’ here might just be someone to keep around for a while. On the other hand, there’s plenty of Eastern European protein on the quivering fat guy in the corner.
So I shoved aside the elderly man and his wife who were standing right in front of the door (or I politely asked them if they would mind if I snuck by them… again, the details are blurred), grabbed the doors where they met and began prying them open. To say that they creaked open after several intense minutes of struggle, blood spurting from under my fingernails while sweat poured down my back, is a lie. The door opened rather easily, and we found ourselves just inches away from a rather disengaged “guard” and a group of tourists waiting to enter. And that was that.
What was sort of funny at that point was how I tried to give the absolutely no-English-speaking guard a briefing and then a little advice. “Shut this deathtrap down!” I roared. “Have a copter airlift the subjects still trapped on the roof to safety and then evacuate the building! No tapas today! No siestas for you! There’s work to be done!” All of this very sage and well-delivered advice went over like a fart in church, I guess you could say. The Spanish are wonderful people, but they are certainly not in a hurry. I heard him saying ”We fix… we fix…” to me as we rounded the corner to sprint out of there. He was ushering the next group of tourists on board.
Barcelona was lovely and I highly recommend it to those who have not been. Incredible food (sometimes you have to wait for it, but hey… what’s the hurry? We fix, we fix…), great weather, good shopping, and happening nightlife. Coming back to the snow and cold of Sweden feels rather shitty, I must say.
To feel better about being home, I made this pork dish last night. Pork is a wonderful substitute for duck, because, hey, a pig with wings is a duck.
I Left My Pork in Barcelona
Thinly sliced pork / sliced pork tenderloin
2-3 shallots
2-4 gloves garlic
15-37 champignon mushrooms (I used about 15 here, and wished that I had used more.)
butter
basil (fresh – best, dried – okay)
spices: rosemary, thyme, mustard, paprika (this is what I used, but you can add whatever the hell you like)
crème fraiche (or sour cream, heavy cream, whatever)
cherry tomatoes (no substitutes here – gotta’ be the cherries)
1 – 2 red bell peppers (paprika)
olive oil
salt and pepper
Trim any excess fat from the pork slices and set it aside. (Don’t throw it – you´ll use it!) Salt both sides of each slice and rub in the spices. Set aside.
Chop (roughly – the bigger chunks, the better) the shallots, the garlic, and the red bell pepper.
Chop the basil.
Cut only a bit of the foot of the mushrooms off – you basically want them whole!
Then, it just goes like this:Melt a couple tablespoons of butter in a frying pan. As soon as the butter is melted, add the shallots, the garlic AND the excess pork fat and reduce the heat. (Remember to fish out the fat pieces later, before serving. Obviously, you can also SKIP this whole fat melting process, though in the end you will lose because my version will taste better.) After about three minutes, add the mushrooms. After these have started to reduce and secrete juices, add the basil. Stir and stir and stir. Have a little wine. Call your mother. Then add the pork. Try to make sure that they brown on both sides, which will mean moving around the other pan ingredients a bit. Let the pork simmer in the juices until they are cooked on the outside, but still feel soft and tender in the centers. [I think this is the trickiest part of both pork and chicken – overdone is tough (with both meats), so I try to pull them off before they’re totally cooked, and then cover them and let them sit to finish cooking.] Then add the crème fraiche (just a couple spoonfuls) along with a bit of olive oil into the pan and stir. Then add the cherry tomatoes and the red bell pepper chunks, reduce the heat again, and cover. After a minute, take the lid off, stir once more, and then cover and remove from heat. Let stand a few minutes and then serve with a boiled red potatoes / couscous / pasta (or with whatever you like!) and a cute little tomato salad.
It went down like this – we were visiting Barcelona´s main cathedral and decided that we really should see the roof. I don’t know why, but it felt right. First of all, Barcelona is a beautiful city, and I had wanted to get a bird´s eye view (instead of a bar’s eye view) of the whole shebang since we arrived. Second of all, though not a religious person whatsoever, I am a sucker for the whole “these really tall religious buildings are tall so that you get closer to God” thing. So up we went.The view from the roof was fantastic, and we spent maybe twenty minutes up there, gazing off in all directions, inhaling the goodness of Barcelona. Sun was shining, birds were singing, and the alcohol that was in me from the night before was slowly making its way through my pores to evaporate into the warm Spanish air. My wife Sanna, my good friend Lenny and I were chirping and laughing and grooving, completely enjoying our little adventure. We were also getting a bit hungry, so the conversation turned to lunch. With that, we started to exit the building (or the top of it, I guess) via the elevator. That’s where the fun began.
Elevators in Europe are, as a rule, smaller than those in the States. And those that are not are dark and mirror-free, creating the sensation of being quite small. But that doesn’t stop people from cramming into them. I have yet to encounter a situation where the most responsible member of the elevator group whips out a calculator, figures the combined weight of the to-be passengers, and then starts kicking out the fatties. The signs always read something like: MAXIMUM WEIGHT: 700 or 8 PERSONS. 700 what? 8 Samoans? Does that mean 16 little people? Who the hell knows.Anyhow, in we crammed and buttons we pushed. There were seven of us in total. Six of us were about “average” for our genders and ages, but we did have one Eastern-European-looking man with us, who seemed to be, well… he was large. I don’t care how short you think the trip is going to be, seven people in a tight space for more than two seconds is a bit imposing. In some ways, riding in an elevator is a bit like pissing in a urinal: eye contact is generally avoided, time doesn’t exactly fly by, the smell is not always pleasant, and simulated wood grain/tiling/wall details suddenly become of great interest. Anything to avoid having unnecessary conversation or be caught looking at the wrong body part. Get in, get out. That’s pretty much the deal.
The ride to the ground floor was pretty painless. The elevator even came to a fairly smooth stop upon arrival. The thing that usually happens next (i.e. the doors open and everybody rushes out) didn’t. The doors did not open. Nobody rushed out. A few moments of awkward silence went by and then I muttered out loud, “Um, this isn’t good.” I looked at Sanna, and could see that the worry was already building. I glanced at Lenny to see that he was busy sizing up the other passengers. He later told me that he was trying to figure out whom he was going to eat first, should this be a lengthy delay.It certainly felt like the fresh air went stale about 60 years ago, and I didn’t feel that an emergency ventilation system was about to kick in. Looking up, I noticed that this particular model didn’t seem to have one of those square little escape doors, meaning that my dreams of pulling a Mission Impossible were quickly deflated. Honestly, I had been looking for my chance to climb out of an elevator-ceiling door and scale the shaft to fetch help, saving my fellow passengers from the ticking bomb that had been placed in the elevator’s floor panels. Without that escape hatch, though, this bomb was surely to blow.
Sanna started pushing those little buttons on the control panel, most interested in the one that had a little picture of a bell on it. One of the first lifts ever made, this one had no red emergency phone that went straight to the Bat Cave. The great thing about the button with the bell on it is that it worked. It produced a bell, all right, but nothing like the alarm signals that you see in the movies. No, this one was a little undulating vibration of noise, sort of like one of those wind-up kitchen timers that continues to sound after time runs out, slowly dying away until its last tick. I was damn certain that the bell was for our enjoyment only, and was not sending a locator GPS signal to our soon-to-be-rescuers. But we pushed and we pushed, and while we did so, the other members of this train wreck were starting to sweat. I could smell it.
At some point we started knocking on the door and yelling. In a claustrophobic situation of panic, perhaps the worst thing to do is start knocking on things and yelling. But I’ll be damned if my parents were going to receive the long distance call explaining that their son, his wife and their friend suffocated to death in a tiny Barcelona elevator. Calm down, ma’am… They had completely devoured the other passengers, so they didn’t die hungry… Suddenly, we heard the muffled sounds of someone knocking back! We had been trapped in this elevator for like 182 seconds or something, and finally, FINALLY, our rescue squad had been dispatched!
Sort of. I mean, there was just a little knocking from the outside world, and then we would knock and yell and kick and scream (all of this to the delight of the overweight Eastern European man, whose bullets of sweat made huge sloshing sounds as they hit the floor. I had turned giddy with the thrill of danger, while his heart slowly went into attack mode.) And then the knocking from the other side again… This cacophony went on like some sort of Gypsy musical number, clanging and clonking and buzzing and yapping for another several hours. (Please be advised that some details of this ordeal, including the time frame, are still very fuzzy. What seemed like several hours to my weakened and anxious soul may have actually been about four minutes. But who wants to read about a four-minute elevator ordeal? Exactly.)
At some point I realized that another super-human trick that was occasionally performed in the movies to escape from certain elevator death was the old “prying open the doors with your bare hands” maneuver. Eureka! At least if I don’t succeed, the others would talk about me in their dying breaths, asking me to bless their children and maybe even give me candy. Additionally, when it comes down to who’s getting eaten first, the guy who’s trying to bust us outta’ here might just be someone to keep around for a while. On the other hand, there’s plenty of Eastern European protein on the quivering fat guy in the corner.
So I shoved aside the elderly man and his wife who were standing right in front of the door (or I politely asked them if they would mind if I snuck by them… again, the details are blurred), grabbed the doors where they met and began prying them open. To say that they creaked open after several intense minutes of struggle, blood spurting from under my fingernails while sweat poured down my back, is a lie. The door opened rather easily, and we found ourselves just inches away from a rather disengaged “guard” and a group of tourists waiting to enter. And that was that.
What was sort of funny at that point was how I tried to give the absolutely no-English-speaking guard a briefing and then a little advice. “Shut this deathtrap down!” I roared. “Have a copter airlift the subjects still trapped on the roof to safety and then evacuate the building! No tapas today! No siestas for you! There’s work to be done!” All of this very sage and well-delivered advice went over like a fart in church, I guess you could say. The Spanish are wonderful people, but they are certainly not in a hurry. I heard him saying ”We fix… we fix…” to me as we rounded the corner to sprint out of there. He was ushering the next group of tourists on board.Barcelona was lovely and I highly recommend it to those who have not been. Incredible food (sometimes you have to wait for it, but hey… what’s the hurry? We fix, we fix…), great weather, good shopping, and happening nightlife. Coming back to the snow and cold of Sweden feels rather shitty, I must say.
To feel better about being home, I made this pork dish last night. Pork is a wonderful substitute for duck, because, hey, a pig with wings is a duck. I Left My Pork in Barcelona
Thinly sliced pork / sliced pork tenderloin
2-3 shallots
2-4 gloves garlic
15-37 champignon mushrooms (I used about 15 here, and wished that I had used more.)
butter
basil (fresh – best, dried – okay)
spices: rosemary, thyme, mustard, paprika (this is what I used, but you can add whatever the hell you like)
crème fraiche (or sour cream, heavy cream, whatever)
cherry tomatoes (no substitutes here – gotta’ be the cherries)
1 – 2 red bell peppers (paprika)
olive oil
salt and pepper
Trim any excess fat from the pork slices and set it aside. (Don’t throw it – you´ll use it!) Salt both sides of each slice and rub in the spices. Set aside.
Chop (roughly – the bigger chunks, the better) the shallots, the garlic, and the red bell pepper.
Chop the basil.
Cut only a bit of the foot of the mushrooms off – you basically want them whole!
Then, it just goes like this:Melt a couple tablespoons of butter in a frying pan. As soon as the butter is melted, add the shallots, the garlic AND the excess pork fat and reduce the heat. (Remember to fish out the fat pieces later, before serving. Obviously, you can also SKIP this whole fat melting process, though in the end you will lose because my version will taste better.) After about three minutes, add the mushrooms. After these have started to reduce and secrete juices, add the basil. Stir and stir and stir. Have a little wine. Call your mother. Then add the pork. Try to make sure that they brown on both sides, which will mean moving around the other pan ingredients a bit. Let the pork simmer in the juices until they are cooked on the outside, but still feel soft and tender in the centers. [I think this is the trickiest part of both pork and chicken – overdone is tough (with both meats), so I try to pull them off before they’re totally cooked, and then cover them and let them sit to finish cooking.] Then add the crème fraiche (just a couple spoonfuls) along with a bit of olive oil into the pan and stir. Then add the cherry tomatoes and the red bell pepper chunks, reduce the heat again, and cover. After a minute, take the lid off, stir once more, and then cover and remove from heat. Let stand a few minutes and then serve with a boiled red potatoes / couscous / pasta (or with whatever you like!) and a cute little tomato salad.
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