(central Alicante, Spain)
("cartas" = mail/letters in old Albaicin neighboorhood in Granada, Spain)
(the Alhambra, Granada, Spain)
With Karolina's stress point reaching a dangerous and scary level due to her looming Medical Final Exam that solidifies her place in the DoctorWorld, I spent several hours coming up with a solution for both of us for me to get the heck out of the house. After deciding against touristy Turkish and Greek resorts, I settled on a flight to Alicante, Spain because it was cheap, sunny and Mediterranean. Besides, I was ready for speaking a foriegn language I could actually comprehend and speak, as well as a warm beach, obnoxiously strong coffee and the loss of my freakishly white skin.
I arrived and navigated Alicante's superb public transporation without a hitch only to find it was rain day and the place was absolutely deserted. I retired to a local overpriced hotel, as my plans to camp would have to wait until tomorrow, napped, got out for coffee and then settled unto a bar stool at a local Cervecería to reaquiant myself with the local cañas (also known as tap beer). After a caña and some secos (nuts) later, a friendly smokey man with crutches struck up conversation with me and we soon were chatting about life, Morocco (where he was from), Spain, castles, ... his recent divorce ... his kids he can only see every other weekend ... and finally = awkwardness. He offered his car for me to drive around the next day, and kept buying cañas, so I went to a trendy little bar down the street with him and persuded him to talk about more pleasant things like where the best place to go hiking was or where the nude beaches are. The night ended, I was weirded out, but I still had my wallet and none of my free beers were spiked. All and all good.
I woke up the next day to sunshine, singing spanish ladies outside my open windows and beaches peppered with people in little euro bathing suits. Juan gave me a ride to the camping place and I told him that I was feeling sick and that I would call him as soon as I took a siesta. He willingly believed this because in Spain you cannot doubt or impede a person´s siesta. Doing so is a major crime.
So, the next few days were spent sleeping in a tent, laying on the beach, reading, running, relaxing and visiting the massive Castillo in Alicante.
I made friends with my neighboors - the crispy Dutch couple who had been coming to Alicante for 15 years (you could tell) - but European senior citizens and their sleepy migrant town can only be so entertaining for so long. So I looked at a map, found Granada and said hello Andalucía, south of Spain, here I come!
Seven hours on a bus, 2 dubbed Disney films, one near heart attack (not me some other guy - weird story, this has happened to me twice, once on a bus from a Honolulu hotel to the airport and then now on a bus in Spain, so please if you have to go into cardiac arrest do so without being with me on the bus) and 3 million smoking pit stops later I reached Granada, a beautiful old city tucked between the Sierra Nevadas and punctuated by a little river and long Moorish history. I did the hostel thing, which was funny because even I felt too young for it, and slept soundly in anticipation for my visit to the Alhambra in the morning.
The Alhambra is a beautiful, beautiful Moorish place that is unlike any I have seen before (Note: I have not seen any Muslim sultan palaces before). Yeah, its toursty, yeah, its old, but YES its beautiful. The wood and stone work are unparalleled and its history transports you into a remote to my European-Christian oriented past and just makes you want to drink sweet exotic tea, smoke elegant fruit flavored tobacco and lay with your sultan buddies on fine Persian carpets. So without further muddled words to describe the pictures.. check it out yourself!
My return was relatively uneventful - a falafel that made me sick here, some sweet exotic tea there, a shorter more pleasant bus ride back to Alicante and a slumber party in the airport - but Sweden was nice to come home to and it brought me right back to my next adventure - The Swedish Wedding (see tomorrow's post!)
Taylor
Tjena,
I have been doing a lot of Swedish stuff the last week since my side trip to Spain. Actually within an hour of stepping off the plane, I was whisked away in a Volvo (the national car of Sverige) to my first Swedish wedding.
My personal Swedish designer fixed me up with hip suspenders and other nonsense that I complained about like a whiny 5 year old boy going to his first Swedish wedding. I endured introductions from two sides of a family that I didn't know and would probably never see again after 48 hours, a service in Swedish mixed with bad English songs on guitar by a great female pastor, and the toasts. Oh the toasts. I don't know Swedish, and the toasts lasted 3 hours, but was made far less than dreadful by copious amounts of buffet breaks and the occasional translation by my table neighbors. If you ever get a chance to go to a wedding where you don't know the language do it, as it will introduce you to a new level of facial feature and gesture observation and even understanding.
The wedding went without a hitch and the night was danced away, rocking the peaceful surroundings of huge pine trees, a tranquil lake and fields of blooming flowers, short green grass and other assorted fairy tale setting features.
