Adios Is Not Goodbye

For the first time in sobriety I was traveling in a country where English was not the universal language, and my initial nervousness had not quite dissolved as I unpacked my luggage. Memories of my last visit to Spain, some sixteen years earlier, rattled around in my head. They consisted primarily of muddied recollections of dimly lit bars, half-eaten dinners, and hysterical arguments with service personnel who had difficulty understanding the Spanish I spoke (which, in any event, existed more clearly in my drunken imagination than in actual fact).