Spain Revisited

In March 1998 I had been living in Holland as an International Exchange Student studying at Utrecht University, a half hour outside Amsterdam in a university town. The Euro didn’t exist, no one was bombing subways and buses in Europe and murder from a hang gun was an unheard of event that brought nations in Western Europe to a stand still when it occurred. I was an inexperienced traveler and spent most of those first four months in Europe traveling through Western and Southern Europe. Things were much cheaper than they are now and a student could easily take a thousand dollars, see a lot, do a lot, and grow as a person usually does from walking the globe. I was twenty three years old, in my second semester of the junior year of university, and starting what would become a lifetime of travel.

The following are some excerpts from my Europe Journal written in 1998 from a trip I took to Spain and Morocco when I probably should have been in class more. To follow is what I call Spain Revisited which is a follow up take on Spain thirteen years later when I went to my sister’s wedding in Andalusia for a week and drove along the Galician coastline following the wedding.

March 7, 1998 Bordeaux, France to Madrid, Spain
I was off on an early morning train to Madrid. This meant a whole day on the train for it was already late morning and Madrid is about a half-day trip from Bordeaux. I arrived in Madrid around eight at night. The place I stayed at was a large flat turned hostel. My room was a shoe box with running water and a shared bathroom on the floor. There was a courtyard in the middle.

March 8, 1998 Madrid
Madrid has a large plaza, a lot of cars, grassy parts, expensive shops, museums, and the biggest post office I have ever stepped foot into. Large post offices seem to be normal in Europe. I saw Jackie Brown at five in the afternoon. The movie theater was packed. The film was dubbed in Spanish with no English subtitles.

March 9, 1998 Madrid
The weather was great. It is my perception and has always been that the Spanish are good generous people. They got Jesus Christ, rice and beans, sun, money, and good family values as far as I can tell. The only people I saw as being fucked up were the alcoholics, but that is everywhere, no place more apparent than in Budapest, Hungary so far in my travels.

March 10, 1998 Madrid to Algeciras, Spain to Tangiers, Morocco
The early morning sunrise north of Algeciras had a full moon on the surreal landscape in southern Spain that was awesome, second only to Southwest America. Somewhere in the early part of the afternoon we arrived in Algeciras, completely cashed from a long night of drinking and smoking. I would return to Spain three days later.

March 13, 1998 Valencia, Spain
We (Carlos (student from Denmark I met on the train from Madrid to Morocco) and I) arrived at five in the morning in Valencia. He called his relatives when the sun rose. Carlos’ family had a guesthouse waiting for us. All meals were outside at the communal table. During our stay in Valencia there was a week long holiday going on to celebrate some Catholic holiday. It was a festival that culminated on the last day with a celebration similar to that of Godfather movies. It included big festivals, marching bands, parades, religious ceremonies, the burning of large sculptures made of wax in the city, with the grand finale taking place in the city center where a huge white angel was burned to the ground.

March 16, 1998 Valencia
Tonight was the end of Fallas and the celebration of the holiday in the village where we stayed in Valencia’s suburbs. The whole village got together on the city streets where everybody made paella in open pit fires in the streets, where the drink worked its magic and music filled the air. The little kids were playing with fireworks the whole time and it sounded like a firing range and a party. I remember at one time during the night somebody asked me if I was alright. I said, “Yes, I am just overwhelmed with happiness.” The way I was treated considering I was a stranger and the goodness of the Spanish people made my spirit fly. It was honestly one of the only times in my life where I felt so good about being alive. I also couldn’t believe how much they drank, ate, and enjoyed each others company.

Spain Revisited 2011

March 26, 2011 Madrid
The first thing I noticed when I landed in Madrid was how the old and new airport collided. One terminal was new and modern and the other terminal looked like the forty year old terminal at JFK International Airport in New York, old, outdated, stale, and depressing. This is symbolic to me because while Spain is now an expensive venture for even the hardest of budget travelers when I first went in 1998 it was inexpensive and you got good value for your money.

The roads have improved significantly and Spain is essentially one of the rich Western European nations, but you can still see how it lags behind what is traditionally referred to as Western Europe. The Internet isn’t everywhere, Spain still takes a siesta in the middle of the day, and the overall attitude is much more relaxed than in Western Europe. While infrastructure is amazing on the primary and secondary levels, there is still a throwback to less prosperous days when you go deeper into the countryside. When the kitchen in a restaurant doesn’t open until nine at night that tells you something about how people live. This is a common thing in what can be referred to as Southern Europe. You find the speed slower, the family values more traditional, and open air markets more common in Spain and Italy. TESCO does not rule Southern Europe yet.

I planned to sleep in the car the first night somewhere along the highway and get to Andalusia the next day along the scenic route. What normally takes four hours took me twelve. Finding a place along the highway to sleep wasn’t so easy. I arrived in two small villages before settling in for the night at a third village outside a bar on a dirt and gravel patch of land that doubled as a parking lot, I did some surveillance, reclined, and grabbed my coat as a blanket.

The first time I woke up a guy was using my car to shield him from others while he took a piss. He had no idea I was in the car a mere three feet from his choice of toilet locations. An hour later two girls used my car as a shield while they drunkenly squatted to take a piss. I could see the expression on one girl’s face as she relived herself. I remained still and looked away because the last thing I want is some drama in some po-dunk village of three hundred people at two in the morning on my first night in Spain. I woke the next morning shaking from the cold but that is the price you pay when you don’t drop a hundred dollars on a hotel room.

March 27-30, 2011 Villanueva de Tapia
I arrived in Villaneva de Tapia in the early afternoon, stopped at a local hangout and had what would be the first of many delicious meals in Spain. It was a fish soup with squid and huge chunks of a white fish I could not identify in a mild tomato fish stock. It was so good I order a second one. After getting a bit lost, I arrived at the guest house about five minutes before my sister and her family arrived. El Molino de Conde was the town’s mill and bakery until a British couple bought the property which sits on five acres of land and turned it into a rental property mostly for groups of fifteen or so people and caters to special events like weddings with the large backyard full of grass, trees and views.

The house sits in a valley in the Andalusia countryside surrounded by plantation after plantation of olive trees. Southern Spain is the world’s largest producer of olive oil and there is practically no place that isn’t touched by olive trees. After the olives are harvested for olive oil production once ever two years, the seeds are dried and used to heat the furnaces of home in the winter, nothing is wasted. The scenery is magnificent, the weather near perfect, and the company choice important people in Allison and Angelo’s lives including mostly immediate family, a few close friends, and their partners.

The food would prove to be amazing, the wine and Sangria delicious, and the relaxation epic. Some food included the traditional Spanish comfort food of paella, a dish made with rice, chicken, clams, calamari, mussels, saffron, and chicken stock simmered until tender, garlic and shrimp sautéed in olive oil in a clay pot, croquettes that we think were potato and pork bits, and never ending cured meats, cheeses, breads, and olive oil. Sangria was made from local wine and fruit that never ended and refreshed each afternoon and night.

It was what should be an still is in many parts of the Catholic and Arab parts of the world normal for the most part, spending time with loved ones and enjoying good food and drink. It is something so common in other parts of the world, but lost in the modern fast paced world of the developed economies. With me living abroad, my sister in California, my brother in North Carolina, our friends and family scattered around America and in some cases around the globe, it is so rare that all of us are in one place at one time to enjoy each others company. While many people claim to have a great love of food, so few understand how to make great ingredients come to life. I have seen how Angelo brings not only great love to my sister’s home, but also a great love of food as well, something I assume comes from his upbringing and what remains of the Bolivian culture that his parents and family must have shown in how they ate and celebrated family events. Something my family did not do so much do to geography and circumstances. People who see the world in tastes, textures, and smell, see things differently, more connected perhaps to the earth and its bounty.

March 31, 2011 Granada
We went to see the Alhambra today. It was cool, but the highlight of the day was probably the meal. The view of the Alhambra from the other side of the valley was really nice, it gave you some sense of the scale of wealth and power the Muslims had in this part of the world hundred of years ago.

Granada has incredibly small streets and practically every road was one way. Cars without a resident sticker were not aloud to drive there. At the top of one of the valleys was a park were hipsters smoked, drank, and played drums and guitars. It was interesting to see how my twelve and fifteen year old nephew and niece, respectively, would react to this. Being from California, it didn’t seem to be a big deal for them. They also seemed to recognize the smell of marijuana and what looked liked a rolled cigarette for what it really was. I guess California children see these images a lot in advertising, school, and on television.

April 1, 2011 Cordoba
It was a nice day with everyone. This day would sort of mark the separation of family from events. The trip drew to a close for many people at this point as work and other obligations brings people back to their homes and families.

April 2, 2011 Villanueva de Tapia
Spent the whole day chilling out at the house. Most people left early this morning and now it is just Alli, Angelo, the kids, and me. We would spend the next few days together in Seville where I would get to know my nephew better and spend some time with my niece, something I have never really had the chance to do as I have not really been a part of their lives since they were born. Emily was born in 1995, my second year in college and Jake in 1998, the year I left America. Turns out the twelve year old and I have a lot in common. We are both children. The older one is more cerebral, she isn’t as funny as the twelve year old, but even at her young age shows strong signs of great intelligence. It was great to spend time with them, getting to know them, and perhaps for even a few brief days letting them get to know their uncle a bit better.

April 3-4, 2011 Seville
Wow! What a great town to be a college student in. Beautiful, busy, lots of bars and restaurants, the kind of place where a bar gets busy at midnight, Seville has a lot to offer the young twenty and thirty something’s of this world.

April 5, 2011 Seville to Santiago de Compostela
I originally wanted to drive to Salamanca, but couldn’t find parking there so I just drove from the south of Spain to the northwest of Spain in one day, about twelve hours, slept in the car after a meal of ribs and steak and woke the next day to drive the northwest coast and north coast of Spain.

April 6-7, 2011 Galicia
I spent most of the day driving along the coastline of the northwestern part of Galicia going from one fishing village to another. It reminded me of Maine in the summer or what Scandinavian coastline might look like or what parts of Oregon and Washington State look like. The house dotted the mountainside, the bays filled with fishing boats, little village cafes and bars, the wood painted red, blue, brown, and the smell of salt water.

After leaving this part of Galicia I drove a couple hundred kilometers along the north coast and spent two nights in a hotel with a view of the Bay of Biscay or what is really the Atlantic Ocean. I could hear the waves crashing through the hotel room windows and saw the tide come in and out. The coastline was fifty foot cliffs with some small trails leading down to the many beaches that dot the northern coast of Spain.

April 8, 2011 Galicia to Madrid
The drive was uneventful. I slept in the car at the airport parking garage. My flight was the next morning to Tbilisi. I was thankful that after not driving regularly since 2003, I was able to do it without any problems.

Looking Back
The thing that a few of us spoke of and that sticks out for me the most is what was referred to as A Change of Expectations. Being thirteen years older now then I was when I had my first overseas experience brings attention to how things have changed for me. In the past not only could I not legally rent a car, I never would have thought of it. Normally I would stay in hostels, but now I couch surf, stay in modestly priced lodgings, or sleep in cars. I take a roll of cash with me instead of trying to stretch a hundred dollars as far as possible. I don’t care so much about tourist attractions and usually avoid them whereas I felt compelled to do them before. I now realize that travel for the budget backpacker that I once was is no longer affordable in Europe and how I can no longer live out my dream of living in Europe without a real job. The Euro and economic development have made it impossible to live on three hundred dollars a month.

On the other hand, I am now thirty-five and will still sleep in a car instead of paying stupid money for a hotel room. I still haven’t gotten a real job. I kept my promise to myself that I would travel as much as possible and learn from it. I haven’t become a slave to some corporation and hence have no real life security, perhaps not so good. I continue to seek knowledge and understanding of different cultures.

As I write this now, I sit in an apartment I am renting while doing volunteer work in The Republic of Georgia. Since leaving Spain the first time in 1998, I have been to over forty countries, lived in Africa, Asia, and Europe, gotten a Master’s Degree, seen Mount Everest from 5500 meters up in the Himalayas, done the Peace Corps (number one on my list of things to do at the time), seen my siblings get married and have children, spent time with my parents when I can as they have gotten into their twilight years, and haven’t lost the travel bug. I still love it even though it is really difficult establishing a new life with each new place I live. I guess there is some truth to it not being about the destination, but the journey.