A Plan to find the Spanish Speaker
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We have agreed to give an Ozone presentation in the first Open Source contributor summit in Latin America. There are people in the Ozone group who are worried about finding the Spanish speaker. But I have a little story about the Mountains of Montserrat and faith that moves the mountains.

Back in May, Marton and I got an opportunity to visit Barcelona for Kubecon. We are in the city lazying around; having had some great dinner, we were planning what do on the weekend. Marton emphatically declares that there is only one thing worthy of seeing in Barcelona. I am all ready for Sagrada Familia; You know, I have done my homework, and he solemnly says, "Montserrat."

I am surprised but there it is; As they say, for churches and temples, it is not your will; but his grace. You might want to go, but you need the divine invitation. There it was staring right at me; an invitation to go to Montserrat, the place they say where the holy grail is hidden. No sane man would pass on that. So it was decided that we will catch the train in the morning.

I am a little worried. My only experience with trains in Catalonia is limited to what George Orwell wrote in 1946 (Homage to Catalonia), "A train which is due to leave at eight will normally leave at any time between nine and ten, but perhaps once a week, thanks to some private whim of the engine-driver, it leaves at half past seven."

So clearly, I am worried. I propose that we leave at 7:00 AM to catch the 9:00 AM train. Marton looks at me like I am crazy and passes on my anxiety. He has good upbringing; when people go mad around him he just smiles. I am thinking he does not get it, so I make another feeble attempt at portraying the greatness of George Orwell. After all, he is the man who predicted what will happen in China 2019; in his book "1984" which by the way was written in 1949. Marton smiles again.

We wake up in the morning, and Marton tells me that we can walk to the nearest train station. Being a person who still misses the turn to my own home two times a week (I claim I am dyslexic and handicapped. So no snarky comments); I am clearly not up to that. Little did I know I am walking with a primordial man. Most people would whip up the phone and say something like "Ok Google," and start walking by looking at the map.


Marton looks up as if to find the stars and suddenly realizes that it is morning, and the sun wakes up really early in Barcelona. He mumbles something like east 33.7 degrees... mumble, mumble... ok, we walk to our left. I am speechless. I wonder if I should tell him to stop and show him my cool iPhone. But he is in a trance, and walking; Reminds me of Zombie apocalypse; I say to myself; this is good practice; I will walk with the Zombie man.

He tumbles through a series of trance-like states, some times he is the Zombie man; sometimes, he reminds me of the wolf chief planning the hunt. He looks at the streets as if he is connecting to the Animus Mundi and calling upon the spirits, and in moments of wakefulness tells me -- not that way, this way.

We walk; me looking around to make sure that Marton does not walk into a car, and he finding the way in the maze. The wolf and the man; Suddenly he stops; He smiles, and I think Marton is back. He points at a set of pillars. They are beautiful. They are decorated with beautiful pictures made from broken pieces of China. They are images of crazy gods long lost; he suggests that we take some pictures and upload that as the Avatar to our slack channel. I obey; I am still not sure if he is fully woken up.


After the photos, he simply walks into the pillars, and I was about to say that the road is the other way, but he dodges through a small hidden door, and I quickly follow. Viola! We are at the station. The magic is real.

Catalonia is true to its traditions; it was a place of madness when Orwell was there; it still is; there was a very complicated conversation with two amazing looking women; about what tickets to buy; They have a train, a rack rail, and a cable car. I know we are going up the mountain; and fat people fear only one thing; climbing. So I wanted to buy all three tickets; I just want to get to the top. The women look at me as if I am crazy, and tell me that they will sell only train and rack rail or train and cable car. I am shocked by the prospect of climbing; I really want to get to the top. Why can't they sell me tickets to all three?. I explain to them that I am an American tourist, and as usual, we demand the best. So in a slow and deliberate manner, I ask them, "How much" .. "to buy" ... "tickets" .. "on all three?"; they have seen too many of these American tourists.

They shake their heads and say, "You" ... "pick" .. "one." "Rail car or Cable?". Marton cuts in and says -- Rail car please and for two. I look at him in horror, did you just sell me out because you want to impress two beautiful babes in Barcelona? That is a cheap trick that I used to pull in college.

Marton explains to me that the rail car and cable are just two ways to go up; since there is only "one" up; you have to choose. I am glad that I did not accuse him of selling me out.

Probably every engine driver in Catalonia is made to read what Orwell wrote; so the train arrived precisely to the clock; Yay! for the pen, at least trains have been improved by Orwell. There is still hope for China.

After an hour, we get off at the Monseratt station. Along with all the other folks who get down we just glide into the Rail car. This is supposed to take us to the top of the mountain. I can see the monastery shining in the brilliant sun, Hanging way above as if it were floating.

Two girls run into our car, sit right opposite to us and start talking in Spanish. Marton says, they are sisters, and the one on the right is visiting her sister in Barcelona. I look at him strangely, and I am thinking this must be a European thing. I say, "what?". He smiles and says that is obvious; you see the elder sister is visiting, see her handbag; and the costly watch. The way she is looking at outside. The second sister is her host; probably always been the "not sure of herself" sister. See the perfectly lined teeth that means that the second sister had worn braces for a long time, and that makes people less confident.

I really offered a prayer; God, Please let them not know English; The needs of a man change so rapidly. I really did not want to be slapped just before visiting Monseratt. I sit there, watching for any quick moments and be ready to duck. Nothing untoward happens; the train starts the climb. The rich sister and hard working one and still in front of us. We are good.

The climb is amazing, the saw-toothed edges of various peaks come and go out of the view. We get out at the monastery with the sisters. Since the sisters were heading towards the Chapel, I suggest that we go up the mountain. I just wanted to avoid Marton saying another story about them, even if they don't know English. As we are waiting for the next train, and getting water bottles for the hike; he tells me how he developed his deduction skills. He was a big Sherlock Holmes fan and wanted to be a detective as a small kid. But Hungary is a crime free country, and he was this poor detective lost in a crime-free paradise. I can see the pain in his eyes. So now he makes up stories about strangers.

The next train is really for the faithful and truly blessed like us will get a seat in the first cabin. These cabins are primarily made up of glass and they offer such amazing views. The train goes up at a 45-degree angle. It is really amazing to be in that first car. The train starts with a large gong; like those old honk-kong kung-fu movies.


You start moving up; It is a single track going all the way up. You fall in love with the moving panorama; you understand why the monks chose such a beautiful place; it is serene and brings peace to your soul.

Suddenly I see a train on the top of the mountain; I am not sure it is really happening, it is just a single straight line track, some crazy moron must have accidentally started the train. I am sure it will stop now; Few moments pass and that manic on the top of the mountain has still not stopped. I look at the back of the train; our driver, a lady, seems to be at peace and probably not seen the train that is coming down. She is sitting with her head down. I debate if I should scream and let her know.

I wonder if this is a terrorist attack; this is a church, and Europe has been undergoing all these attacks. I freeze; I am not sure what do, and these stupid crazy thick glasses do not seem like a good idea now. Even if I scream, no one can hear me, and the aspiring detective has still not seen it.

I breathe deeply; push the panic deep down into my gut and nudge him and point at the train coming down. He looks at it, pulls out his phone, turns around and takes a selfie. I am now convinced that we will be counted in the annals of stupid people who died taking a selfie. Sometimes people freeze when facing death; I am not one of them; I prefer to go down fighting; I thought I will need to nudge him to wakefulness. I say, "Marton, this is a single track, and there is a train coming down at us." He says, "oh, that" and points to the middle of the track; way above us, there is a small loop; that the track splits into two, for a very small distance and merges back.

I get it now; the train from the top is going to stop on the left side track, and wait until we pass it and then it will start. That is safe; I am at peace again; In fact, I am proud of myself; I pretend I am Indiana Jones in the last crusade and I am taking "the leap of faith"; You believe, and the train shall pass.

The engineer who did these trains are amazing, at the right moment, both these trains reach the split in the middle, take the two small pathways and merge back. No stopping, it is a clean, smooth ride. I am thrilled, and so pumped that Indiana Jones survived.

We get off at the top; like most promises in life, this also is false. The top just gets you the start of the climb. So much for that. There is a long winding road, and a huge peak up ahead in the distance. Marton tells me it is close; having climbed a few of these "close mountains," I know how far they are.

We start walking the long winding road, and we reach the first of the shrines. I kneel and pray; I ask for the love and peace for all. Then Marton looks out the far beyond blue expanse and tells me that it the ocean. I argue that the sea is at least 60 km away, so, no that is just the horizon. We discuss, Marton looks up the internet for the maximum distance you can see, etc. and finally like the Apache committers we are, we decide it is the point where the sky meets the sea. Both of us are happy and continue our walk.

We climb to the next shrine; we see the water wells; and steps that these monks have cut to get to fresh water. We sit down looking down at the monastery and thank gods that fresh water was hard to come by. They were forced to invent beer. So that was a moment of thanksgiving, truly from the bottom of our hearts, in the silence of peaks. I kneel down and pray for love, peace, and beer.


Then we get to a flight of stairs that is carved on to the rocks. They are dangerous to climb, and an American couple was climbing down telling us that it is a hard climb and they are giving up. We decided to take those stairs, and that led us to a pathway guarded by the ancient vines. Roots of the trees were above the ground as if telling us, "ye, shall pass only if you are worthy." Some we jumped over, some we climbed under, but yonder we went.

We reached another ruin, with the outer walls; that was another shrine; we pray again. Now the climb is hard and far more vertical. All fat (I think I was the only one) and smart people try to reduce the center of gravity by climbing with all four limbs. A few minutes later; we are truly are at the top. I looked down at the Cervantes's Spain, and all I see are large number of Windmills. I cannot but smile; I look around for the Don Quixote.

Marton looks very grave, almost frightened. He points at huge thick black clouds. We can feel the rain in the wind, and we can see it moving fast towards us. No wonder I cannot find the Don Quixote; He is standing on top of a mountain that is about become really slippery. I understand why Marton was concerned. He looked at me and said simply; "that is a storm." No decorations, nothing about the mountain; nothing about the predicament; nothing about the stupidity of climbing mountains without raincoats or good shoes; nothing about not checking the weather.

When you see a problem there are two responses; a deep-seated panic or perfect calm. A deep-seated panic if it is a problem that you have no control over, or a perfect calm if you have a handle on it. By all counts, this should have been a panic moment. I readied myself for the torrent of panic to pass through; instead, all I could see was the golden sun rays filtering through the clouds. I felt the warm glow and gentle hug of the wind dancing with the rain. Something told me that the storm is not going to hit me. No, I was convinced that this was a moment of glory; not of trouble. It is impossible to convey how one knows something; perhaps that fact that I grew up a town with sea and incessant rain has taught me to read rain clouds and storms. There are moments in your life that is far beyond the realm of words. Very essence of what you want to say goes away if you try to say it; you know that nothing is going to happen; and the storm is not going to hit this mountain today; but you don't know why; you just know.

I looked at Marton and wanted to tell him -- just like the wolf knows the way; a falcon senses the void, but that would have been lost too. So I simply told him "it is by his grace that I am here today; so shall his grace guard me. There is no storm today." Marton looked at me, wanted to say something and thought better off it. We sat down and enjoyed the view; in the perfect stillness, we could hear the choir singing deep below in the monastery.

the storm raged on.


We trekked down, took the rails back, and took the train back home.
As we were getting out in Barcelona; Marton said; today we were lucky. I knew luck had nothing to do with it, or perhaps it was luck; after all, luck is what you make of the day.

So that is how I see crisis; each one that leads to either panic or a perfect calm; over the years, I have noticed that crises bring calm than panic. In fact, I look forward to the crisis like a tai-chi master looks forward to meditation. So it is; some times, I create artificial crises like promising a Spanish speaker; some times, I climb mountains; at the end of the day; we are all lucky.