February in Spain

 

Barcelona

After Switzerland, I got a cheap Easyjet flight from Milan to Barcelona, and went to Spain, where I would spend the next 3 weeks. I was only in Barcelona for a night because my main destination was going to visit my friend Ryan in Portugalete, but going through Barcelona was the cheapest way to get there and it’s a city that I had always wanted to see.  I planned to go with Cassandra, but unfortunately due to some flight mishaps and a stolen passport, she ended up in England instead so I was solo in Barcelona. I checked in to a really nice hostel for 7 euros a night—the cheapest hostel I had come across yet (Morocco was cheaper but that hadn’t happened yet). I met some people right away, ate some paella that one of the hostel workers was cooking, and went out with them to a bar with free salsa dancing lessons. I failed miserably at salsa dancing, but still had a pretty good time drinking beer. The next day I walked around the city on my own, saw the big cathedral which was a pretty cool big tan gothic-style building, and then got on a train to Bilbao, in the Basque Country of Northern Spain.

I arrived in Bilbao pretty late at night and took the metro to Portugalete, a suburb, where Ryan is spending the year playing water polo and teaching English. That area in Northern Spain is called Basque Country, and it is pretty different from the rest of Spain. They speak Basque there, a language which seems to have basically no relation to Spanish, although everyone speaks Spanish as well. Also apparently they want to secede from Spain and become their own country.

I stayed there for about a week and a half, sleeping on one of the several extra beds in Ryan’s living room. It was one of the rainiest places I’ve ever been, I think it rained every single day and went through periods of torrential downpour mixed with hail and snow. But when the rain stopped it was beautiful. While I was there we walked down to the beach, checking out the wreckage caused by the storm over the weekend. That area is known for really good surfing, but unfortunately we didn’t get to surf because there was a boat flipped over and countless tree trunks being tossed around in the waves, and it was really ridiculously windy. We also drove up to the hills about 15 minutes inland, where there was a good 6-10 inches of snow and made a pretty epic faceless snowman.

During the weekend we went to Santander, a city about an hour and a half west of Bilbao by bus, and the largest city in Cantabria (a province in north Spain). We were hoping to ski at Alta Campoo, a small ski area in the Cantabrian mountain range “Los Picos de Europa”, but unfortunately it was closed all weekend because of the wind. So instead we checked out Santander and also went to the world-famous Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

During the days when Ryan was working, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out my future and also hung out with Ryan’s awesome flatmate, Marta. She didn’t speak too much English but we were able to communicate pretty well with a mixture of English, Spanish, and charades-like acting. In the evenings we hung out at the bars on Ryan’s street, which were always filled with a hilarious group of very talkative Basque men with whom I spoke some Spanglish. One of the guys hosted a party at a bar one night and we were the youngest people there by about 15 years, but everyone loved us and bought us drinks so it was pretty fun.

After a week and a half in Portugalete, I took a bus to Madrid, which was mainly just a stop to pick up some of my stuff from my ex-girlfriend’s apartment while on my way to Caceres. It was horribly awkward and sad but I got the clothes that I needed and I stayed at a hostel which turned out to be really fun so I stayed 2 nights. In Madrid I met some really cool people at the hostel—a girl from Anacortes, Washington, two girls from Canada, two guys from Australia, and a guy from Belgium who speaks 7 languages—and we all hung out together. The Belgian dude had just finished a trip around Morocco and told me all about it, which got me really pumped for my upcoming trip to Morocco. We went to a museum, then got some tapas, hung out at the hostel for a while, and went to a pub and had a great time.

My next destination was Caceres, where my friend Matt is currently living and teaching English. I took a blablacar (carpool) to Caceres and the driver made sure to let me know that Extremadura (the region which Caceres is in) has the best Iberian ham in the world. I was only there for two nights and unfortunately never had a chance to try their self-proclaimed best ham in the world, but it was a really good time. The first night we went to a language exchange at a bar and the second night Matt had a party at his house. Matt’s housemates were all really fun and the party attracted quite an international crowd; I met a really awesome girl from Belgium there, as well as people from Mexico, Italy, England, France, Spain, and probably more. During the day we went on a walk in the hills outside of Caceres and bought duck costumes for Carnival from the most racially ignorant costume store I have ever seen (but it was the only option). The store was called “Kikes” and the costume catalog contained a couple normal categories like food and animals, but the rest of the categories were all making fun of other ethnicities, like Mexican, Arab, Black, Chinese, etc. If liberal arts students found out about that shop there would be a facebook outrage. That was one of the several “culture shock” moments that I’ve had in Europe where I realize that all of the discussions we’ve had in the US about racism and equality have made a big difference, and many other countries are far more ignorant but just don’t have the diversity or large enough minorities for it to be discussed as much as it is in the US.

After Caceres, Matt and I took a blablacar to Sevilla, where we spent one night on our way down south to Cadiz for Carnival. Sevilla is a beautiful city, sunny and filled with orange and palm trees. We spent the day walking around Sevilla, slept in a hostel, and met up with Andy and Ryan the next day and headed to Cadiz.

Cadiz was one of the more ridiculous party experiences of my trip so far. Every year, thousands of people put on costumes and get hammered in the streets for a week and a half. Dressed as 3 ducks and a hot dog, we took the train to Cadiz equipped with several beers, rum, and nobody remembers what else. There were a few stages set up around the city with singing groups called “chirigotas” performing what were apparently hilarious satirical songs, but I didn’t understand any of it because it was in Spanish.

As the night went on, the streets became more and more filled with glass, beer, and piss, which didn’t seem to matter so much at the time, but the next morning the smell of our shoes was a powerful reminder of what we had stepped in the night before. It was a really crazy night though, we met so many people whose names and faces I will never remember, saw so many incredible costumes, and witnessed the amazing spectacle of thousands of ridiculously dressed people completely disobeying the law and drinking and celebrating in the streets.

Here’s a link to a video that will give you a glimpse into life at Carnival:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205927094080958

                After Carnival, we split up with Matt and Andy, and Ryan and I took a bus to La Linea de la Concepcion, a Spanish city just next to the British enclave of Gibraltar. We walked across the border into Gibraltar, a tiny peninsula owned by Britain but connected to Southern Spain. Gibraltar is known for its primary geographical feature—the Rock of Gibraltar—which takes up about 90% of the peninsula. The border crossing consisted of us holding out our passports and the security officers not wanting to look at them and waving us past. To get into the city of Gibraltar, we had to walk across the airport runway in between when planes were taking off or landing, in the shadow of the rock the whole time.

I felt an immediate cultural difference; in two minutes of walking we had gone from fancily-dressed Spanish people crowding the streets with that terrible bright red lipstick that they seem to think looks good, to groups of blonde British kids wearing shorts and yelling in thick English accents. It was the first time I had been in an English-speaking country in about 6 months and it felt really weird to be able to understand passerby’s conversations. We spent the evening walking around the perimeter of the rock and then had some British poutine at a pub, which was an amazing mix of fried potato skins, cheese, meat, and gravy.

The next day we woke up early, ate an English breakfast and hiked up the rock, into a nature reserve where a ton of Barbary macaques live in a semi-wild state. It was really cool to see the monkeys, although a bit sad to see how much the tour guides feed them to get them to crowd in certain areas for the tourists to take photos.

When we got down from the rock, we got on a ferry to Tangier, Morocco, only about 20 km across the Strait of Gibraltar from us. The ferry was delayed several hours because of the wind, and when it finally departed it was a shit show. The waves in the Strait were huge, big enough to rock the ferry boat so violently that anybody trying to walk down the aisle was slammed into the wall, and several loud crashes rang from the café where kitchen equipment was sliding across the floor and shattering. When we finally docked in Tangier, puddles of puke stained the carpets. It was not a pretty sight.

We got off the boat and it was immediately obvious that this place was far different from Spain. Within seconds, five taxi drivers surrounded us, telling us (wrongly) that there was no bus and their taxi was the only way to get from the ferry port into town. We eventually gave in and paid for a taxi and met up with our couchsurfing host, Anas, in the city. Anas is a student in Tangier and had a couple extra mattresses in his apartment which he offers for travelers to stay on for free (check out www.couchsurfing.com if you’ve never heard of it).

The next morning we went to walk around the Medina (the old part of the city), which contained a few markets and lots of tiny maze-like alleyways. It was a really cool area to explore but I’ve never been anywhere with such annoyingly persistent salesmen as Tangier’s Medina. Since it was very windy that day and not during the tourist season, we were some of the only foreigners walking around, and the guys on the street were extra persistent because they had nobody else to prey on. They would follow us around, pointing out everything in the city while constantly telling us that it is free to look at everything, and then get very angry when we refused to buy their hash or pay them for their unwanted “tour”.

But, other than those guys, Tangier was a cool city. Anas’s neighborhood also had a large market, selling everything from carrots the size of my forearm to live chickens, and the salesmen were much nicer there. It was possible to get a full meal of produce for about 30 cents and everything was fresh and delicious. The area fit my mental image of Morocco very well—a chaos of donkeys, camels, chickens, and children running across the half-dirt/half-paved streets with cars constantly honking and swerving to avoid the people and animals in their way. Somehow that chaotic-yet-semi-functional mess made it a very charming place. We had a really great time hanging out and learning about life in Morocco with our couchsurfing hosts, who were some of the most friendly and welcoming people that I’ve ever met. I definitely want to come back and visit in the summer when it’s better beach weather.

After Morocco, Ryan and I took a ferry back to Spain, which was also delayed by several hours and the waves were equally big as the last time, causing the ferry to constantly feel like it was about to flip. After a failed attempt to hitchhike to Malaga/Granada outside the ferry port (Spanish drivers apparently don’t like hitchhikers), we got a cheap hotel room for the night and took a blablacar to Granada the next morning. In Granada, we met back up with Matt, and spent the afternoon wandering around near the Alhambra, Granada’s famous castle, and eating the enormous tapas that come for free with the miniature Spanish beers. For 2 Euros, we could buy a beer at a bar which came along with a sandwich or small hamburger. Granada had by far the best tapas that I ate anywhere in Spain, and generally a really great vibe.

The next day we went on a hike near the city. One of the best things about Granada is its location right next to the mountains. We took a bus up to a small mountain village and spent the day hiking back down to the city center, something that’s not possible in most cities. Although cloudy, the views were gorgeous and it was really nice to get out of the city and into nature with good friends. We met some other Americans on the hike who invited us over for beer pong in the evening, which was an excellent throwback to good times in college.

The next day was my final full day in Spain, and it was spent well, skiing with Ryan at the Sierra Nevada Ski Area, 45 minutes from Granada. This is what really cemented my love for the city. It’s possible to hike, ski, and get ridiculous amounts of free food with your beer all in one day. The ski area was pretty big, a lot of fun, and had incredible views from the top.

If I ever return to Spain for a longer period of time, it will definitely be to Granada.

Next up: French-speaking countries. Skiing in the French alps, adventuring deeper into Morocco, and returning to France to visit high school friends.