A lucky streak (Vigo, Spain)

This will be a one-paragraph update! This weekend I walked hours on end, to the distant parts of Vigo and back along along rivers and parks, and visited two museums, the MARCO (Museo de Arte Contemporanea) and Verbum, the House of Words, which underwhelmed me (I spent two whole hours there, though, trying to suck everything I could from my 3-Euro entry price). At the MARCO there were two main exhibits, both excellent. The first floor was filled with concrete breakwaters, and everything was left as it was when the workers had finished, so I walked on crinkly plastic tarp, around ladders and rolls of tape and wooden crates, past scratched walls. I liked it. The second floor was a collection of work from various artists, all about culture, identity, nationality, those kinds of words. My favorite exhibit was a documentary video by a Polish artist, who put in the same room a group of elderly Catholic women, a group of young Neonazis, a group of young Jewish people, and a group of young liberal political activists, and told them to express themselves with the materials at hand. They used large pieces of paper, paint, tape, fire, everything they could to display their own opinions and react to those of others (they could change the others´ artwork). I was sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time; very tense. Over the course of four meetings, the groups yelled at each other, covered their ears, walked out, barged in, and very creatively and symbolically manipulated what others had done to ´win´ the opinion expression game.

Okay, two paragraphs, but this one will just be to say that I´m having the best luck with people, again. Yesterday I sat in a park with all of my bags, waiting to move to my next CouchSurfer´s apartment, and a man and his wife started talking to me (now I don´t even have to initiate conversations!)(well, I guess when I look 100% like a tourist I don´t). After I explained what I was doing, the man said, ´But I suppose that you don´t actually want to go to sea?´ I said, ´What? Of course I do!´ He has a good friend with a big sailboat, and he invited me to go sailing with him around the ria and to nearby islands. !!! I´m meeting with them on the docks tomorrow. (They also told me that if I couldn´t find anywhere else to stay, I should call them, and ditto if I needed anything, anything at all.) And this afternoon I am meeting with Francisco, the brother of a friend of a friend, who works in the Port Authority and is working on getting me permission to be on the docks this week! Amazing! The CouchSurfers I have stayed with are very generous and friendly, and every time I ride a bus an old woman chats me up. I like this place.

Tomorrow the docks! Maybe even this afternoon!