Christmas Travels in Spain

Let’s see, I suppose I could start in Granada. We had to stay one night there because our flight left so early the next morning. It was a rather cold and rainy day there, but it was pouring when I left Algeciras, so it was an improvement. On of the professors at my school gave me a lift to Granada; he was already going there to pick up his son from college. His son is studying English Translation, I think, but refused to speak to me in English. He was telling his dad about how he and his friends went looking for ghosts at four in the morning. I got to see the inside of the college, which I think Pepe (the professor) told me was founded by “Los Reyes Catolicos.” Compared to American Universities it’s so small, but more impressive.

Right, so I met up with Orquidea and we caught a bus up to the Albaycin, the ancient Moorish neighborhood on the hill across from the Alhambra, where our hostel was located. We dropped off our stuff and proceeded to wander around the Albaycin in circles for a long time, before heading back down to the center of Granada to wander some more and look at some of the shops and Christmas markets that were set up. In a few places they were playing “villancicos,” some in English and some in the traditional Spanish. We also found a Belen (nativity scene). In Spain these are everywhere. Every city puts up a huge and very detailed display. In one we saw in Cadiz, there were actually tiny live fish swimming in a pool and the lights slowly dimmed and relit to magically create day and night. We were with a professor and her daughter at this exhibit in Cadiz, and the little 5 year old was pointing out everything that she saw and we had a hard time prying her away when the exhibit closed.

Oh, I almost forgot we also went to a teteía, a favorite pastime of people (well tourists at least) in Granada. There is a whole street filled with these teteías, decorated in “Moroccan” style, with lanterns and low tables. They make the tea with milk, which at first does not sound very appetizing, but it is very good, and apparently close to chai tea back home, but I don’t think I’ve ever had that. The tea is very good, but the atmosphere is very touristy, though still fun.

We made our way back up through the hills, and I have to note that Orquidea chose the hostel all the way up there, and chatted a bit with the two French-Canadian girls that shared our room with us. The next morning we had to get up so early that a good many people were only just making their way home from the discos, though granted in Spain people sometimes stay up to 7 when the discos close. On the plane we met a girl from Mexico who is studying psychology in Granada, and Orquidea and her chatted for the entire one-hour flight from Granada to Barcelona.

We arrived in Barcelona and were surprised at the sun and the warmth; we had expected it to be cold, being so much further north, but Granada had been much colder. We found the hostel, dropped our bags and headed down Las Ramblas, which took us to the ocean and a huge statue of Christopher Columbus. I can also picture sailing boats in a small harbor, and long stretches of boardwalk along the sea with the sun in the bright blue sky. I dragged Orquidea with me to go to the history museum before it closed. Because of the holidays we had to carefully plan our days around the different schedules. We only had time to see one exhibit, which I only vaguely remember; it was about some war for the crown of Spain. I do like history (though I tried to deny it for a long time), but it tends to get all muddled up in my head, but perhaps I can just blame that on European history and the thousands of battles, wars alliances, and marriages of royalty.

The thing that I remember most about the museum, is that I couldn’t read most of the signs. At the entryway to every room, there were summary signs in English and Spanish, but the majority of the museum was only in Catalan, the traditional language of the region, which resembles a mix between Spanish and French. Bear with me for a very brief history lesson. During the dictatorship of Franco, all other languages spoken in Spain besides Spanish as we know it (Castellano), were forbidden. Now they want to preserve their language, and Catalan is even taught in schools. However, while I was reading the signs I felt as if I had regressed back two years in my ability to read Spanish, because I could only make sense of every third word or so.

That afternoon, after a desperately needed siesta, we wandered around the fancy shopping district with some really expensive stores, that I have no clue about, but Orquidea was trying to teach me. The Christmas lights in the city were beautiful, and of course, instead of “Feliz Navidad,” the greeting is written in Catalan, “Bon Nadal.” Later we decided to go for a tapa, and we saw the beginning of the Madrid verses Barcelona soccer game, which apparently are the two most important soccer teams in Spain. When we left, two men gratefully took our seats, and afterwards all the bars we passed were packed with their TVs tuned to the game. We were hoping for a Barcelona victory so we could see the city celebrate, but we were unlucky.

The next morning we went to a market to buy some fresh fruit and cheese. This one was not the least bit touristy and it was fun to hear the Barcelonans speaking in Catalan, and then easily switching over to speak to us in Spanish. Outside the market, while puzzeling over our map, a little old man stopped to help us. We told him we wanted to go to La Sagrada Familia. He told us that we could walk all year and not get there, and then proceeded to tell us about a Metro that they are trying to build underneath La Sagrada Familia, which might make it fall, and if it falls it will start World War 3. I think he had us there for a good fifteen minutes or so, but he did tell us how to easily get there on the Metro.

We arrived at La Sagrada Familia. A massive church Gaudi worked on for a great part of his life. And when I saw massive I really mean it, because most churches look really big, but with modern buildings surrounding them, they get lost in the skyline, not La Sagrada Familia. But of course they haven’t finished building it yet. Gaudi’s style recalls older architecture, but always with an imaginative twist. We also went to a hospital constructed by another architect, but in the same imaginative modernist style. You feel as if you are in a cartoon, but my pictures of it didn’t turn out well. The sun was so strong in Barcelona that there were always strong shadows on everything I took pictures. Christmas day we also went to the park that Gaudi created: Parque Guell. As you can see from the pictures, we were thrown into another fantasyland. A couple of nights before seeing all of Gaudi’s works, I started reading Alice in Wonderland, that Orquidea lent me. If anyone wants to go to Barcelona to see Gaudi’s works, I recommend this, because both are so imaginative, and I can completely picture Lewis Carroll’s work taking place in Gaudi’s park.

On Christmas, we treated ourselves and went out for Italian food with an Israeli girl from the hostel that we met. In the sorts of hostels that we stayed in you meet people from all over the world, which is one of the attractions of traveling this way. To my knowledge I’d never met anyone from Israel before so it was interesting to learn about her and her country. Sadly we didn’t do anything else more Christmasy, except think about all of our friends and family that we miss.

The next day we wished Barcelona goodbye, but only after we got lost in the Barcelona Metro system. We spent a long time jumping on and off the different lines to find our way to the bus station, because we couldn’t even find a map to consult. However, I did see a book-vending machine, which I thought was the coolest thing ever, until Orquidea told me that they had libraries in the Metro in Hong Kong.