rizer shizer and gringo shmingo

throughout the beginning of the trip damon has consistently uttered the saying "rizer shizer". the literal translation from german is "travel shit" and the saying was adopted by damon and dale during their travels to refer to any instance when a country or culture gets the best of someone while traveling. arriving at the hostel in paris late at night to discover that it was overbooked is an example of rizer shizer. being forced to repeat french words by an english speaking goon in order to use a computer is another prime example. damon and i experienced quite a few instances of rizer shizer within paris and during our first few days in spain. however, it was not until the second night of the merce festival that damon and i created the term "gringo shmingo".

whereas rizer shizer refers to when an external factor gets the best of someone while traveling, gringo shmingo is used to describe when someone gets the best of him/herself while traveling. basically, it's when you fuck yourself over for being a stupid gringo.

this term came into existence as damon and i were walking back to our hostel from another concert at plaza catalunya. while the night before was one of the highlights of the trip thus far, the second night of merce found us distraught and audibly questioning our decisionmaking processes after a brief sting operation by the barcelona police. the short version of the story is that damon and i were caught selling beer at the concert by undercover cops and had the remainder of the beer and our backpacks confiscated. the long version is definitely a bit more interesting, so if you have a few minutes you might want to read on.

after witnessing a clan of sketchy indians make a killing selling beer outside of plaze catalunya during the first night of the merce fest, damon and i devised a plan. the dollar has been at an all time low during our trip and we decided that we could sell beer and use the profit to compensate for the high prices of everything. content to make just enough to cover our bus fare to bilbao (about 40 euros each), we decided to buy ten 6 packs of ixtapa beer. if we could get 10 euros for each 6 pack we would hit our goal and head north the next day.

the first sign that our plan might be flawed was that the grocery store was almost completely sold out of beer. during the previous day nearly two aisles were filled with all different types of beer. on the night of the incident only one stack of maybe forty 6 packs remained. feeling uneasy, i bought eight 6 packs and a few bags of ice. i figured the worst case scenario would entail breaking even and sharing the remaining beers with gretchen and her friends.

a few hours later, after damon and i had rigged up a makeshift cooler out of a plastic trashcan, we loaded our bags and set out for the plaza. we were both a little nervous and i vaguely remember telling damon that if anything happened with the cops i would stick to speaking english and adhere to the ignorant gringo act. we laughed it off and met up with gretch and her friends.

selling beer was not nearly as easy as we had envisioned. most people either brought their own beer or were still recovering from the night before. after a half hour we were still without a sale and the beer was starting to get warm. damon and i agreed to initiate a new strategy‐ a beer for 1 euro until we broke even, followed by laughing off the entire operation and enjoying the leftovers with friends.

the customers finally started to trickle in. first a guy bought 3 for him and his friends. than a couple of singles followed by a big sale‐ a 6 pack to a single dude. pretty soon a crowd of interested buyers began to gather. and then things got ugly.

after explaining to a confused spaniard that we were selling beer, a large man wearing a dark safari vest walked up to us and presented his police badge. my heart sank. we were fucked. time for gringo mode. another undercover officer appeared and the two of them escorted damon and i away from the plaza and towards a set of police cars. the whole time the guy in the vest was saying, in spanish, that what we did was illegal and that we would have to pay a fine of 300 euros each. "una multa de tres zero zero...vale?" i stuck to speaking english and kept repeating that we didn't have 300 euros and that we were only selling the beer so that we could raise enough money to leave barcelona for good (not a complete lie).

when we arrived to the police cars the undercover officers took our backpacks and beer and added them to a giant stack of hundreds of previously confiscated beers. after reminding us of tres zero zero one more time they walked away. damon and i each thought of running away but the real cops had my passport. after a few minutes of waiting patiently for our destiny i approached the uniformed cop and asked for my passport in english to keep up the act of not knowing spanish. he handed it back and stared blankly at me. i asked him if we could go and was met with another blank stare. finally i asked if we could go, in spanish, to which he replied "goodbye".

as damon and i walked back in defeat we realized how much worse things could have gone. a 300 euro fine would have made it almost impossible for us to head down to morocco, and a night in jail surely would have been much worse. gordo rule #2: don't hustle unless you are legitimately struggling.