Spain to Italy

admin — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:10:54 +0000

Out of Spain, a very quick look at Italy and I'm on my way towards Greece to meet Lars. My stomach is expanding, mentioning this to a Spanish friend I was told "la curva de la felicadad", the curve of happiness, Spain is one of the best places I have visited, exceptionally friendly, home of the Botellon and the good life. I entered Spain on overnight train with no switch to turn off the lights, a day walkign around Barcelona and checked out one of the most superb things to hit my corneas, Gaudi's Sigrada Familia. This building should have offended me, yet another monument to man's imaginary friend, a half built church, still under construction, buildings like this were only built in the age of empires. This building is so twisted, curves and waves of stone that are almost natural, sculptered by the wind into all the fantasies of the Christian myth. I am glad the Anarchists didn't level this thing in the civil war, in a future age it will be the last great monument to humanities collossual collective psychosis. From a brief look at Barcelona, full of the suave and delicate I was onto an English teaching school in a part of the country I can't quite locate on the map, they drove us there on a bus from Madrid. A village abandoned 30 years ago then restored by an American with a mission to spread English and a cash making machine. With my money running low I have been looking at options that cost me nothing, the deal was, I get free food, a bed and wine at lunch and dinner in return for speaking English all week to Spanish business people. The Spanish pay Euro 1800 for a week of this, I said to them at the end of the week, they shoudl have booked a flight to the US or the UK and gone out to bars to speak to people. From my perspective it wasn't too bad, I pinched extra bottles ot wine at lunch and dinner to drink throughout the day and at the bar at night making for a cost free week. Still I had to wake up every morning at 8, it was run on a military schedule of one to one conversation an hour a piece throughout the day, plus some ludicrous entertainment in the night where everyone was forced to perform, I sung Bob Marley's "Smoke 2 Joints". I figured since I wasn't getting paid I was goign to talk about stuff that interested me, the Spanish civil war, federalism, independence movements and perspectives on anarchism, not too sure if the executives from Dailmer-Chrylser were expecting this. I slept outside one night, got an infection under my arm, used their medical insurance to go to the doctor and got voted most entertaining anglo at the end of the week. On to Madrid for a night or two, not much to report, antibiotics stopped me doing anything fun but a contact via my sister Bree with a friend of hers in the south put me on a bus to Huelva, near the the border with Portugual and one of the best weeks of this trip. First day started with a BBQ on the beach, two teams playing charades to guess popular movies, followed by football on the beach and all night drinking. Things start a little late in southern Spain, we'ld head out after 12 for Bottellon and hit some truly atrocious clubs after 4am playing disastrous regaeeton to return sometime after eight. This Bottellon business is superb, unorganised mini drinking festivals on the street every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night starting from midnight. Banned in the north of the country, the southerners have resisted, unperturbed by street lights turning off, police roadblocks and residents sick of a street littered with whisky bottles and stinking of piss, evidence that the youth are not apolitical, they will resist controls on when and where they have a party. Gathering on various streets and squares, more of a summer thing but persisting throughout the winter, no music, no organisers, no cost except a bottle of whisky a bag of ice and some soft drink. Infintely better to the smell, smoke, cost and noise of bars, clubs and pubs after a day where the maximum temperature was never below 40 standing round outside on balmy summers night I thought, this is what we should be doing in Melbourne in summer. My partial Spanish returned quickly, Anotonio, Bree's friend the only one speaking English and I felt super comfortable in this country. Antononio's friends welcomed me in, they are exceptionnaly friendly people, as I would sink out of the conversation, unable to understand their rapid half broken Spanish drawl with cut words someone would start talking to me again in slow Spanish and bring me back into the conversation. The only tourist attraction of Huelva is reconstructions of Christopher Columbus's boats that sailed towards India, he left from this town. Need to keep things quick, I'm in an expensive itnernet cafe. A few quick impressions, families yellign at each other, abrupt and quick, people don't speak in low voices here, not aggressive or in anger they are just overly expressive, they are more animated than a comic strip. Arms and hands flying all over the joint trying to maximise the effectiveness of communication, or maybe it is just for entertainment. A very quick note on politics, this country is falling to bits it is so federal, the Catalans and Calaonian before Spanish, the Basque dont' even figure Spanish into their identity, and everyone's town has the best and most well known party in the world. I'm amazed this country holds together, some interesting conversations about Franco and the Spanish civil war whcih people seem more intent on forgetting than remembering, more about regional conflict than ideological. OK onto Italy for two days where I write this before I get on a bus for Slovenia and a capital I dare not pronouce Ljubjana. Thought I was flying into Milan but was in fact some regional town with an airport that Ryan Air use to keep things cheap, a bus to a town called Verona which on entering the I found out is the setting for Romeo and Julliet. This town is Christendom, churches like mosquitoes in the tropics, still a beautiful town. A train to Venice to become a sheep and strugglign not to be pushed into one of the very murky looking canals. I really hate been a tourist and this country, like France outside of the farm, makes me feel like one. I feel like the locals resent my presence, an afront to their country and a waste of their precious space, maybe if I like art one day in the future I will come back to this country and check out the famous shit. But I am not asthetic, art is waste of time for me, the delicate offends me. Still Venice does look nice, but its a tick box thing for me, I really have no idea why I do this. I should avoid these places as if they were mountains of pork, they only rial me, maybe I should just come to the overtouristed at a different time of year, or when I know someone who can take me in. Anyways, hope all is well, I'm off through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and into Greece to meet Lars in three weeks where I will get to practise the four years of Greek that I learnt in primary school, counting from one to ten.

No related posts.

Jesse's Travels » Spain

Spain to Italy