Spain and the Conclusion of my Adventures (at least for now)

In a week I'll be flying back to the states. So I guess  this will be the last entry in my blog. Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of this project.

 

After the lovely weather in Tangier, (70-80° F), the heat of Spain hit us like a ton of bricks. It was in the high 40s C, (well over 100 F) without a breath of wind. I don't do very well in extreme climates and I was pretty sure I was going to die. I was NOT excited about standing on the side of the road to hitch a ride to Sevilla, especially since all the hitchhiking forums had said Spain is horrible for hitching. However my bad karma is leaving a place, not coming into a place, and we caught a ride within about 20 seconds.

We were picked up by a Polish trucker who spoke no English or Spanish but was very nice. He gave us chocolate and explained how he had a truck filled with crabs from Africa. We had to draw a map to make sure he was going where we were going but it all worked out in the end. He took us directly to Sevilla, the easiest hitchhiking experience I have ever had. He dropped us off near downtown and we were able to walk very easily to the house of Rafael, our Spanish couchsurfing host.

Rafael is an interesting character. After many denied requests for places to stay in Madrid and Sevilla, I had posted an emergency couch request and Rafael contacted me. I get the impression he likes to be the night in shining armor that saves girls in need. He was very sweet, and very helpful but he hosts a LOT of surfers and I got the impression that his roommate Hannah has had enough guests. She turned out to be nice too however and I was really grateful to them for hosting us. They gave us a lot of good information about places to eat. Natalee was on an eternal quest to eat churros but we seemed to have the worst churro luck in the world, and could never find any.

Sevilla is a great city. The architecture is so beautiful and intricate. There is a fantastic palace where you can really see the Arabic influence in the mosaics. The detail is incredible.  Every room has a fountain in it. It really made me want a house with a fountain in my living room, but first I need to find a place to live, and then afterwards try to put in a fountain. I loved the palace, it had the same sort of architecture that I had been hoping to see in Eastern Europe but could never seem to find. There was also a great network of subterranean tunnels and baths under the palace. I really wanted to go explore them but you can only go in a little part of them. They're all lit up and very cool in the heat of the day. I wanted to stay down there forever but Natalee said we had other things to do.

Natalee had two goals in Spain- to go dance Salsa and to eat tapas. Tapas are the coolest thing ever. A tapa is a meal but really tiny and only costs a couple euros. You get a lot and then share. I love it. It's like food in miniature, and you can try a bunch of different dishes without getting hugely fat.  I got really excited about them and I think I drove Natalee insane with my tapas obsession. Our second day in Sevilla we went Salsa dancing. I have never tried it and I can safely say I only stepped in a few toes. Natalee is actually really good and I think all the guys there were in love with her. As for myself I felt a little out of place and very clumsy, but it was nice to get out. The only time you can really get out in Sevilla is in the middle of the night, since it's so hot during the day.

While in Sevilla an American girl from couchsurfing contacted me. She had seen on the site that I was in Sevilla and she messaged me to tell me that she and her husband had passed through Algeciras and Sevilla on their honeymoon. However they had left their camera with all their honeymoon photos on the bus from Algeciras to Sevilla. Daniella had tracked the camera down to the bus station in Sevilla and wanted to know if I could pick it up and meet her in Oakland so she could get the pictures. I agreed to try to get it for them and there started an epic adventure to procure said camera. Natalee and I stopped by the bus station but the girl there told us she had no idea what we were talking about. I contacted Danielle for more information and she told us the camera had been sent by bus to the station and that she was sure it was there. I talked to her for ages and got a list of information, then enlisted Hannah, the roommate of our couchsurfing host to come help. We went back to the station (stopping several times on the way to avoid dying of heat stroke) with our list of details and asked to speak to the manager. Maybe he had been trying to keep the camera for himself, but he seemed a little intimidated by the three of us showing up at the window and handed over the camera, with all the photos intact. It made my day and Danielle was over the moon that we had safely obtained her photos. I'll meet up with her and her husband in the fall to give her the camera. They have a house in Paraguay and she has offered an open door there whenever I want to come. I might take her up on that, I would love to see Paraguay.

We stayed three days in Sevilla, and were planning on hitching to Madrid, but there was a slight problem with our second couchsurfing host in Sevilla so we ended up taking a horrible 6-hour night bus to Madrid. Natalee is gifted with the ability to sleep sitting up but I spent a miserable night on the floor of the bus trying ineffectually to sleep. We rolled into Madrid at 5am and sat in the bus station until the sun came up. This all became OK for me when we made the acquaintance of a lovely hippy guy in the bus station. He was having a hard time finding a computer and Natalee and I rushed to his aid. He was surprised we offered to help; he said most people seemed to think he was shady because of his dreadlocks. I told him we like hippies with dreadlocks.

We had been unable to find a couchsurfing host in Madrid, so we splurged and spent three nights in a wonderful hostel. It was a really nice way to end our trip because it was great to have a place to put our stuff while we explored the city. The hostel had a kitchen where we could cook food, and due to our tight budget we ended up having a lot of pasta. There were a lot of interesting people at the hostel and we immediately made a tight group of friends with a Dutch girl, an insane Serbian hippy, and two Brazilian guys. We all went out for tapas and beer but ended up getting a little drunk and into a little trouble. However I avoided getting into a fight, getting arrested, getting injured and waking up to someone regretful, so I consider the night a success. The Dutch girl is halfway through medical school so she and I talked a lot about it. It seems that if med school is really something that interests me then I should go in Europe. 

I didn't take as advantage of Madrid as much as I wanted. I was tired most of the time, maybe still from the Ramadan schedule, or maybe because I'm a little depressed about going back to the states. Natalee ended up getting up early to see the city while I slept all morning, but I got out a little. I spent a lot of time wandering through a beautiful park in the center of town. I like being alone sometimes, and there were almost no tourists.

We went to a couple museums that have free hours in the evening. They were crowded but it's really nice for them to offer free hours. They feel that it betters society to offer free art to the public, which I completely agree with.

The Prado museum is the second largest in the world, after the Louvre (which we couldn't afford to go to). It had some really interesting art, mostly old and religious. I get a little tired of Jesus art; I can only look at so many paintings in one day. Jesus is blond and blue-eyed in every one. I would really like to see one that showed what Jesus actually looked like but he lived thousands of years ago and there are so many stories about him that I think no one will ever really know anything about  him for sure. There was a really interesting painting that explained the creation of the Milky Way. It showed a huge fat woman squeezing her breast and spraying milk that became stars. It was quite odd.

The next day we visited the Museum de la Rena Sophia, which is mostly modern art. It might have been my favorite museum on my travels. They organized the art by date and they had some fantastic pieces. I saw Picasso, Dali, Kandinsky (a personal favorite of mine) as well a lot of others. Some of the art I didn't like but most of it I loved. They had apiece about the Kennedy assassination, which was really interesting. One of my favorite pieces was a room at the end of a long hallway. I entered the room to find the artist had told the story of the Obama election with laws signs. It was so emotional for me, having worked on the campaign and been so involved with that election. There were McCain signs and Hillary signs but they mostly were Obama. There were signs as well that said things like, "McCain fan, you stole our Obama sign but you can't steal our vote". It just reminded me of that year and how the country so united, everyone talking about the election and everyone trying so hard to get him elected. Everyone I know can tell you where they were that night we all watched it on TV, gradually realizing he was going to win. I have never known the country to be that unified. And now no one can agree with anyone else and I'm terrified the insane Republicans will take the presidency. All this came down on my head while I stood in that room filled with Obama signs and I can't deny I may have shed a tear or two. I wish desperately I didn't care about politics, that I could live in blissful ignorance like so many Americans. Traveling abroad for so many months has really made me see America in a different light, especially when I'm in places where there is such a strong youth movement. I am continually frustrated by my people and it feels like the change I try to bring about never seems to do anything. It's a strong argument for me to plan to go to school in another country, maybe to take advantage of my British citizenship. When frustrated with your country how long should you try to make it better before you throw in the towel and say fuck it, I'm going somewhere else?

Anyway. The museum was fantastic and I was so happy that we got to see all that art. After that we walked home through the city. Near the museum there is a fantastic living wall that is at least 5 stories tall. I was so impressed by it; there were a dozen different kinds of plants. I want one of those in my house too, along with a fountain in each room. (My house is going to be the coolest ever...)

There is also a fantastic house that looks like the architect was on acid. It's covered with faces and squid and flowers and is totally hectic and crazy. I loved it, and went out of our way to show Natalee. It was designed for a banker and is held as a meeting point for officials.

Our last night in Spain we came back to the hostel to find we had a new roommate in our dorm. Until then we had enjoyed the dorm with only me and Natalee and two lovely Dutch girls. However our new roommate was quite a character. He was a Spaniard apparently from Madrid, and had no bags or belongings. We couldn't figure out what he was doing in our hostel and we wouldn't get a straight answer out of him because he was blind drunk. Over a course of several hours he took five showers, each time using my towel and my roommates' shampoo. Then so smoked a bunch of cigarettes in the bathroom. It was quite unfortunate. When the Dutch girls tried to confront him he told them it wasn't necessary to be worried, because he's gay and "big men fuck him many times". In the end we asked that he be moved to another room, which was a situation that worked out for all involved. It was an interesting end of our trip. However the awkwardness of our encounter with the drunken Spaniard was made better by Natalee finally finding churros. They were quite nice.

Early the next morning we headed out to the airport, Natalee to go back to the US and me to go back to spend a week more with my family before flying back to the states for the Burning Man festival. After only 6 months I have very few connections to Bay Area, I have no job or house to go back to, and only 18 cents in my bank account. However I'm excited to see my friends so I figure I'll stay around the bay area at least for a couple months. I can't decide if I'm happy to go back. I'm sure after all this time I'll experience severe culture shock and I'm definitely not looking forward to the stress of having to figure out my life. But I feel like I really need to start being an adult and maybe getting my shit together in terms of a career.

 I have had the greatest time traveling, getting to visit three continents and more than a dozen countries and I can't wait to see other exotic places, possibly visiting Saudi Arabia in the spring to go diving in the Red Sea, one of the best dive sites in the world. I have made the most amazing friends and seen the craziest things, climbed a mountain and got stung by jellyfish and somehow avoided getting arrested by the Greek and Italian police. I hitchhiked with a bunch of meth heads and narrowly avoided having to prostitute myself at the Turkish border. I think I took some Canadian guy's virginity (oops...) and broke a French guy's nose in the middle of the night and managed to not get sold to the illegal organs trade (my mother is relieved). I was almost forced to convert to Islam and I can bargain with a Moroccan merchant in Spanish, French and Arabic. I can say, "you are the nicest goat" in Dutch and can tell an Arab man to enjoy his Ramadan hunger.

I'd say that isn't half bad.