Seasons on the Move

Madrid – April 11

We picked up our Brazilian visas in the morning. The day next day, we were off to Rio. Our plans to walk along Paseo de Recoletas were thwarted by thunderstorms. Instead, we sat inside a cafe for most of the day. The place was packed from morning to afternoon. Seemingly no one in Madrid had a job or prior obligations. I had noticed this since arriving in Spain, people would rather wile away the hours talking and drinking than worrying about things like work hours. Something to that, I think.

At night, we met up for dinner with a Jorge, a former professor of Fabiola´s and a Caraza family friend. He talked about his family, his daughter Paulina, married out of the church like us, typical scandal, how he had turned liberal, and what had been going on in his life over the past decade. We talked about our travels, the film and more particularly, what had been going on in Fab´s life since graduating from university. A good time was had, wine was drank, Paulina stopped in for a visit, nice girl, and then we parted ways.

We returned to Puerta del Sol, had one last round of tapas and chatted with the Jordanian bartender, after he noticed the Arabic warning label on my packet of cigarettes.

Barcelona to Madrid – April 10

The train ride back from Barcelona was uneventful. Fab read Tolstoy and watched a movie, I dug Kerouc and listened to music. Back in Madrid, we returned to Puerta del Sol, checked into the same hotel and ate tapas for lunch and dinner.

Barcelona – April 8

We stumbled down to the grocery store located at the foot of the student housing complex and bought some food for the next couple of days. Life on the road had worn us down. All we wanted was some semblance of an apartment and a kitchen to cook in. Eating is restaurants can be a real drag after a while. I hate the guess work.

We set out after a big breakfast to discover the city. We started at the Arc De Triomf, a Spanish facsimile to its Parisian counterpart. Although same in shape and dimension, it was different in colour and design. From there we hit the back streets of the city, taking in the Gothic architecture and getting lost in the maze of narrow side streets. Barcelona had a completely different feel than Madrid. While Madrid was grand and obvious, Barcelona´s charm was in its effortlessly cool demeanor, its celebration of the avante garde; an alternative city where you could let your freak flag fly. The Catalan language, a strange blend of Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian, added to the city´s flavour.

Down on the Ramblas, dels Caputxins and de Santa Monica respectively, we watched street performers entertains hordes of tourists on the wide, tree lined boulevards. There was a Michael Jackson impersonator who couldn´t moonwalk, which, to me, is kind of the most important part of being a Michael Jackson impersonator, and a robot who ingeniously did the robot to techno music anytime someone dropped a coin in his tin cup. Two Australian girls tried to sneak a photo of the robot without paying. The robot turned in a circle to keep from facing the camera. Since his get up made his movements lethargic, the girls were able to snap a photo before he could rotate. This caused the robot to snap. He started out by telling the girls “vayarse a chingar a su madre” (go fuck your mother) in his synthesized robot voice, then gave them the robot finger, then switched to English and called them whores and told them to fuck off. Classic.

We walked north on the Ramblas, stopping to look at vendors selling birds, mice and fish. German football fans, in town for a club match against the home side, drank steins off beer and sang their team´s song. We stopped at Mekat Boqueria to buy some fresh basil and lemons and then went to meet Fab´s cousin Carla, a doctor working in Barcelona, to have some tapas and drinks.

Marbella to Barcelona – April 7

I drank too much coffee in the morning and had the jitters the entire way to Barcelona, a nearly six hour train ride. I tried to even myself out by slamming back a couple of beers, but it didn´t help. Instead of being able to nap on the train, I sat and stared out the window at the Spanish countryside, the low lying grey clouds and the globulates of rain streaking across the window.

We got into Barcelona just before midnight, caught the last metro train of the night and checked into our accomodations, a student housing complex with rooms containing full kitchens. Although I was still wired and could not sleep, I was looking forward to our stay in Barcelona, a city I had always wanted to visit.

Marbella – April 6

Fab and I ate oranges in bed and then went to find the local movie theatre. All the films were dubbed in Spanish so we passed and had lunch instead. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to watch some turtles sunning themselves in a pond. When the sun began to to set, we went down to the beach, walked along the boardwalk and treated ourselves to some pistachio ice cream. For dinner, we ate anchovy stuffed olives, sardines and tuna on melba toast and watched a movie (dubbed in Spanish) on television.

Marbella – April 5

We walked around town in the morning, taking photos and stopping to drink coffee at numerous cafes. In the afternoon, we called my sister, Jessica, to fill her in on the pros and cons of living in both Marbella and Monda. Marbella is where its at. Mondo, although pretty, had few upsides. Unless you consider hanging out with senior citizens on park benches and petting stray dogs fun. My sister sounded excited about the prospect of moving to Spain and doing what she´s always wanted to do, that is, study design. I told her that it would be incredibly romantic to live in a seaside Mediterreanan town, with a beautiful old centre and idyllic beach. She agreed.

Monda – April 4

In the morning, Fab and I took a bus up to Monda, nestled in the hills about an hour north of Marbella. The narrow road twisted and turned above the valley leading up to the town. Down below we could see olive trees, grazing cattle and quaint country homes.

We got off the bus in central Monda, which isn´t saying much because the town is small enough to be considered a village. Before getting our bearings, we had a caña on the patio of a restaurant and immediately noticed that seemingly everybody in the town knew each other. Our mission in Monda was to scope out the school for my sister so after polishing our drinks we set out to find the new campus.

We found the school without much trouble. The main building and annex were still under construction and set just a few minutes walk outside of town amongst wild flowers and rolling hills. A nice place for a school we both thought.

We returned to Monda after snapping a couple of photos of the school and walked around to try and get a feel of the place. My sister wanted to know whether it would be better to live here or in Marbella. I prefered Marbella despite it´s touristic ambience. I´ll take palm trees and checkered boardwalks over rural life any day of the week. However, Monda had a really nice graveyard.

Marbella – April 3

Fab and I had a nice breakfast in the Plaza de Naranjos just down the way from our hotel. The plaza was filled with orange umbrellas, orange trees and holidaymakers from across Europe. After eating, we walked around the Old City´s cobblestoned laneways, in between white washed walls and underneath wrought iron balconeys, dangling vines and potted flowers. It reminded me of colonial Mexico, which I guess is not all that surprising.

We went for a walk along the beach in the afternoon, dipping our toes in the cold water and breathing in the salty, warm Mediterranean air. Topless sunbathers, being served cocktails by waiters in suits and white gloves, were scattered across the coarse sand. Up above the beach on the boardwalk, suspect characters eyed the wealthy tourists taking photos and eating ice cream. A few years back, Marbella had been the scene of a national scandal when it was revealed that the city was being used by Russian mafia bosses to launder money. After the scandal, Marbella, once the heart of the Spanish jet-set scene, took a nose dive and its prosperity suffered. From what I could tell, the city still hadn´t fully recovered. Empty store front windows were around every corner. However, according to one recently returned local resident who had moved at the height of the criminal activity, Marbella was well on its way to recovering thanks to a police crack down and public outcry.  

Fab and I also paid a visit to the design school that my sister planned on attending in the fall and met with the program director. She was a nice Danish woman with short, blonde hair and big bones. She threw out the typical “our school is amazing, everyone should come here” lines, but the portfolio of student work she showed us was impressive. She also informed us that a new campus was being built in Monda, a town north of Marbella, that would provide ample room for the study body as well as a less cluttered environment (the current campus was on the second floor of an office building).