españa part 4: 300 days of sun? yeah right.

I’m sorry, Spain: I’ve been remiss. I blame the weather.

Spring is here and the manpris are out. Which means I spend my hours outside along the berges reading and people- and cloud-watching rather than inside blogging. Seriously though, the clouds lately are so mesmerizing. They glow with afternoon sunlight like they’ve swallowed some kind of radioactive poison and make me feel like I’m trapped inside of a painting.

But it’s pouring now. I can hardly hear my music over the thunder rumble and heavy patter of rain against my kitchen window.

So let’s talk about Valencia:

I rolled into Balenthia (as the Spaniards pronounce it) at night and the only thing motivating me to get off of the most comfortable train I’ve ever been on (thank you, Euromed) was the prospect of seeing Liz after months of failed European réunions. Seeing a face from home on this side of the pond is always so refreshing and has a way of shrinking the world, even if temporarily. In a nutshell, my visit to Valencia consisted of the two of us café-hopping, laughing, sharing stories about our experiences abroad, and marveling at the fact that we never met each other until first year at UVA despite the horde of common acquaintances we have in Charlottesville.

(Hey, Liz!)

For those of you unsatisfied with this brevity, here are some details:

- As we left the train station and headed by foot to my hostel, I immediately had the impression that Valencia is the Spanish version of Lyon. To name a few similarities: they’re big but not overwhelmingly so (in fact, both cities are the third largest of their respective countries); while their populations are at once old and young, they’re mostly dominated by college-aged students; architecturally speaking, traditional and modern blend together as one, although there are distinctively historic barrios (the Spanish word for quartiers) that are separate from their contemporary counterparts; both cities orient themselves around nature (Lyon its rivers, Valencia its rio turned orange-tree-scattered parque) and a linear series of plaças; and both are completely different (although equally as beautiful) at night than they are during the day.

(follow the redbrick road)

(part of the ciudad de las artes y las ciencias)

- Food: People eat late in Spain. As in restaurants are still packed at midnight. Which is why we were lucky, considering it was the peak hour of 11:00pm, to find a table for two at some great, side-street taberna (tavern) upon my arrival. Highlights from this dining experience include my introduction into the world of tapas and our awesome waitress whose enthusiastic, wide-smiled, belly-rubbing gestures convinced us to order the mystery-meat dish pictured below. She was also kind enough to punctuate our meal with free glasses of mistela, a kind of traditional post-dinner fortified wine (correct me if I’m wrong). Also memorable was Friday’s authentic paella lunch. Whether from pre-siesta exhaustion or some other inexplicable reason, Liz and I had a bad case of the giggles. We therefore found it particularly difficult to suppress our laughter among my futile attempts to remove a snail from its shell, a discussion of dishes that shouldn’t be eaten on a first date (paella is definitely one of them), an alarmingly high number of miserable-looking mother-father-daughter threesomes, and a restaurant-wide struggle to eat what looked like rock-hard pieces of piña (pineapple).

(mmm, goat cheese and mystery meat)

- Thursday night, we headed to the apartment of some of Liz’s amigos for a night of conversation and music. Red wine, Spanish, the orange incandescence of scalding metal: all of these kept me in a heightened state of vertigo. I was at once detached and present. I listened as seemingly accentless words poured like a steady flow of water from Liz’s mouth (seriously, Liz, yo’ español is impressive), understanding some of them, but mostly floating somewhere just beyond the walls, observing the scene as if through some distorted bubble.

(l'auberge espagnole)

As much as I hated the idea of leaving Spain, I was forced to hop aboard my train Saturday afternoon after drinking one last freshly squeezed zumo de naranja (orange juice) and saying goodbye to Liz. My train led me to Barcelona, where I met up with Denis, a Frenchman I’d found on covoiturage.fr (a legitimate carpooling website where you can find rides in people’s cars for nearly half the cost of other forms of transportation), who was to drive me the 7.5 hours back to Lyon (oops, I may have left this detail out when talking to you about my plans, Mom and Dad). After throwing my bags into Denis’ radioless ’93 Mercedes-Benz, he and I set off. The time passed remarkably quickly; night fell and the headlights came on somewhere among the Pyrenées Mountains, and we spent most of the time talking, comparing and contrasting the two countries (Denis had lived in Spain for three years and was in the process of moving back to France) among other things. We stopped at a typical side-of-the-highway service station to grab a couple of sandwiches and cafés for dinner, and entered the familiar territory of Lyon just after midnight. Denis dropped me off just in front of my apartment, where I plopped immediately into bed and fell asleep to the dizzied slideshow of Spain running on repeat in my head.

And for some reason I never thought that nearly a month and a half later I’d still be writing about it. ¡Adios at last, y’all!