Wednesday, July 9, 2008
12 Days in Spain (feat. Morocco & Gibraltar)
Well, I have been back from Spain for two days and now I am sitting in a train with Jenny on the way to Dresden. Dresden is my last trip before the big trip back home to Florida. Had the brilliant idea to bring my computer along to get some things done...it takes about 5.5 hours to get to Dresden from Koblenz—in other words, I'll be here for a while.
I flew with Ryanair and had a terrible flight as I expected with the loudest screaming child I have ever experienced! Ryanair sucks. I will say it loud! But they're cheap, and offer the best and most convenient flight times to Málaga. It took me almost 12 hours to reach my final destination in Granada. Setting out at 8am for the Koblenz Hauptbahnhof, I arrived in Granada at 7:45pm, four bus and one plane ride later. Thank the Lord for iPod (I mean it!!!)
We watched soccer at an overcrowded, sweaty Irish pub the first two nights and Friday afternoon we flew to Barcelona for the weekend. It was getting late already by the time we got there but we still got to check the place out a bit—we walked to the marina toward the large monument of Christopher Columbus and to the Barcelona bridge there where we were greeted by hundreds of fish and several giant seagulls (Big Willy of course among them).
First thing Saturday we took the Metro to Gaudí's Sagrada Familia, which is still under construction and “financed by the people”. It is estimated to be finished by 2025. We also took the elevator up one of the towers and were afforded with some fabulous views of the city from there. We took the stairs down and on the way got to inspect the building a bit more, too. After that we walked a lot and ended up getting totally ripped off at this sandwich shop... for two grilled cheese sandwiches and a little Frenchbread pizza, we paid €16, which is about $25! That made us mad for a while, but I guess we could afford to lose a little money since we had saved so much on the accommodation and flight there. Plus, we had breakfast and dinner at home which saved a lot o' cash as well. We got to see a lot of Gaudí's stuff after that, like the Casa Batlló. It was closed that day so we decided to go the next day... We walked through Barri Gotic district which is really really pretty and has a medieval feel to it. There are some pretty churches in there we got to see as well. We stopped by an old Roman cemetery, which wasn't in its original state, obviously, but it was still neat. Inside the Cathedral in that district, we saw the geese that live there in the cloister! Some of them have little tufts of feathers on their heads :-) Walking down La Ramblas afterward, which is the famous hoppin' street in Barcelona, was really fun! There are a bunch of little pet shops there selling everything from chickens and geese to turtles and chipmunks. I read something about how they are getting shut down because of animal cruelty regulations of some sort. There are all kinds of people there putting on all sorts of shows-- we saw one who was a really good robot!! If they stop moving, they won't move again until someone puts money in their jar, hat, can, or whatever they have sitting there to collect it with. I imagine the ones that are really cool make a killing!!
We slept until 10am on Sunday, but then got going because there were still a lot of things left on the list to get done!!! First and most importantly was to go see “Gat”, which is a HUGE and wildly random cat statue standing quite inconspicuously to the side in Rambla del Raval... I fell in love there. It was so neat! I think we took the most photographs of that one thing than other single thing we saw (except the Sagrada Familia, lol). After that we were saddened that Palau Güell was closed Sunday and Monday and we wouldn't have a change to see Gaudí's chimney pots there. Schade! We headed onward to the Battló House though, which was really neat (and expensive--€13,20... that is how much I pay for the bus to the Frankfurt Hahn airport!!). It came with a pretty neat audioguide though and it was just wild to walk through a house like that, knowing it was built sooo long ago. To have it look so modern even today, I can't imagine what it must have been like to see a house like that back in Gaudí's day! Park Güell was next on the list, which was also one of Gaudí's fabulous masterpieces... interestingly, the park was supposed to be a private playground just for the rich people's kids...
Barcelona's fab and hot beach was next on the list, so we hopped the Metro to check things out on that side of town... the sand was very sand-colored... I was surprised. I was also surprised by the amount of women baring all on the beach who shouldn't be baring ANYTHING... what I loved most about the beach was when you reached into the water to pull up a handful of the watery sand, you got a bunch of beautiful stones instead!! I took some home! One of them reminded me of Gaudí :-) so I called it the little Gaudí stone. Later that night after dinner and such we watched the Europe cup finals at a bar on the beach... after Spain won, it was surprising how calm the Spaniards there were... I think cuz there were just a ton of Germans there as well, maybe they were being polite—but somehow I doubt that. Needless to say no one got much sleep that night since everyone in Barcelona who had anything to make any sort of noise was out in the street doing so! I slept anyway. Most of the problem had to do with how freaking hot it was in Barcelona and just how poorly ventilated the building was. Normally it is cooler inside buildings than it is outside, right?
Some sidenotes for which I found no convenient place in the last few paragraphs:
OMG there were so many invisible mosquitoes in Spain and they bit me and bit me and bit me and NO ONE ELSE. I am so serious, no one I asked got bit and you can believe I asked EVERYONE. They bit my butt, my hands, my feet, my shoulders, my arms, legs, every where and I never saw them when they bit me. Not one.
2. It smells bad in Spain. They apparently wash the streets and I think that is why everyone lets their dogs shit on the ground and then they just leave it there—oh, someone will clean it up. Plus when its hot it smells even worse.
a bird pooped on me for the first time in my life while in Spain. Weird.
I love sangria
5. I DID photograph every cat I saw, and several times.
Monday we went back to the cathedral to go up to the rooftop since it was closed on Sunday and it was really neat. We got to see the geese again which was also a treat for me!! We walked through Barri Gotic again and then went back to check out but we left our luggage there and headed to Montjuic on the Metro. By then we were soooo tired we just wanted to sit. The parks in Montjuic are really pretty and are even home to at least one cat. After tiring out in Montjuic we metroed back and had lunch, then strolled up La Ramblas again before making a quick stop off at the big cat in Rambla del Raval. There was a cute group of kids playing on that cat who quickly noticed us and wanted to be friends with us. We took pictures of them at their request. After that we just went back to the hostel and chilled for an hour or so before heading to the airport... we met a really strange fanatical lady in the train... at first she seemed friendly but just got SOOOOO preachy--- she is from California and just started talking to us about how shes going around the world spreading the message not to support the war in any way... she went on to list all the keys to heaven like no eating meat, no getting married and/or having sex, no having children, etc. etc. etc. and a whole lot of other unbiblical things. I asked her if she had been married and she said she had been and had also had kids but was now married to Jesus. Which is great and all but come on... it doesn't say in the Bible that you can't get married, for Pete's sake. She also claimed that China has a 2 million man army sitting and waiting to devastate Europe and take over the world and that Jesus has already returned........ she just kept talking and talking and we just kept listening and then this French-sounding guy started arguing with her so we were grateful and got to sneak out before it got any more intense, lol...
Our plane was delayed an hour, laaaaame.... so we sat there for several hours but finally made it back to Granada. And the next day we washed laundry and other such exciting tasks.
And the next day we rented a car and drove to Tarifa, the southernmost city in Europe!! Tarifa is soooo pretty. We went to the beach to which there were two sides-- one calm but crowded side, and one empty, really windy side. We met a family of cats living in the rocks near the beach, including three kittens—a black and white one and two little orange kittens. SO cute! Was definitely a highlight for me. In the hostel we met some Italians who are from Süd Tirol which is the north of Italy close to Austria... it was neat to talk to them... we heard them talking and they sounded German but I couldn't quite understand what they were saying... and it turned out they spoke to each other in dialect ;-). What's also cool is that you can see Africa from the coast in Tarifa... and coincidentally, that was our next stop!
The next day we took a ferry ship to Morocco (specifically, Tanger). It was crazy! I haven't felt seasick ever before, but this ferry was so fast and it was such a bumpy ride I really did feel sick. Even now sitting on train going backwards I don't feel queasy in the least... something about the water, I think. Anyway our tour guide in Tanger was really cool and spoke good German. We thought we got stuck on a French tour, when really there were a lot of Germans, Spaniards, and French people on the bus. I think I was the only person there whose mother tongue was not spoken during the tour....but it was cool. We walked through the old town and were continuously brought to shops and street performers and we got the feeling it was all kind of organized to help people out... which was cool. I rode a camel, held a snake, and tasted some real Moroccan bread! We had lunch at a real Moroccan restaurant where the food was surprisingly NOT salty... and I ate couscous for the first time in my life...and liked it! The people selling stuff on the street in Tanger are really pushy... at times there were 2, 3, even 4 of them trying to sell us different things at once and we just had to keep walking and ignoring them and even saying NO and they still wouldn't leave us alone. They were all desperate to sell their stuff! In one of the markets in Tanger we saw a huge bucket of snails and the lady selling them got mad that we took pictures of it, but it was neat and the snails were all still alive just crawling around. A lot of time was spent looking for a Fanta can with Arabic writing, which we finally ended up finding at the concession stand on the ferry, AFTER we had searched for it all day, lol...
The next day we went to Gibraltar, which is in Great Britain, incidentally... there is even border control there... there was a looooot of traffic to get into the place, but we parked in Spain and walked (the more I think about it, the more this place seems like a theme park than a country!!) The main street there was soooo cool and everything was like a little England, I just loved it! They have their own coins (the British pound but some still say Gibraltar on them). They have Barclay's bank there from whose ATMs I can withdraw money fee-free... which I did, since I was running out of cash. Turned out we had exactly enough money to go on a Rock Tour. The cable cars we would have taken were out of service since it was kind of a windy day, but in the end we lucked out with a mini-bus tour and saved some major dough and time along the way. My favorite part of Gibraltar were the rock apes-- I didn't know there were apes here until the day before we went there! They are really funny and just kid of sit around and interact with the tourists, all the while trying to steal food whenever they can. We took a lot of great pics, so check 'em out :-) Upon leaving Gibraltar it REALLY felt like a theme park.. everyone in their sneakers and backpacks leaving through a common exit... the only thing different was going through customs for Spain on the other side :-) ha ha... I think we ate at McDonald's twice that day, too... did they change their ice cream cones since I left? Now they have regular ice cream cones for their soft-serve and not those nasty styrofoamy ones...
Back in Granada for the weekend, not a lot happened, so we got a chance to relax for a little while. Viktor's birthday was Sunday, and so Saturday night we were out till 3 am celebrating. On Sunday, two of Viktor's friends from Germany (whom I also am acquainted with) came to visit. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them. We walked around in the city with them and ate a whole bunch of free tapas in a bunch of different bars in Granada. That was really neat. I don't know how people can eat those all the time, though-- they're soooo salty and greasy for the most part, I started to feel a bit sick after a while, ha ha... some were really good though, like a real Mexican taco. Okay, I had to admit it tasted like one from Taco Bell off the dollar menu, but it was still pretty good. Yeah and the next day we all took a bus to Málaga, and though I had hoped to hang out with the rest of the little group for at least a little bit before having to go to the airport, but it seemed to make more sense to just head to the airport instead of risking getting there too late—traffic in Málaga at the moment is horrid... the entire city is under construction!!
So I went to the airport and the Ryanair flight—the last one I will have to take for at least a year!--was not that bad...I got an entire row to myself in the back of the plane with NO kids around. It was fabulous. I just listened to my iPod the whole time and the flight was over before I knew it. Then I got on the bus home and only after paying the fare of 13,20 euros for the last time did I discover that there is a 3,30 discount for BahnCard 50 holders... and the tightwad wouldn't give me my money back even after I asked THREE times VERY nicely and after I watched him sell a woman a child's ticket... jerk jerk jerk. Just dealing with this rigid unfairness and, I forgot to mention, the rain and COLD in Germany I was greeted by upon stepping out of the plane, really made me homesick and I just felt like crying the entire way home. It didn't get any worse till I got into my building in Koblenz and fell flat on my ass by the mailboxes because the floor is so slippery. Can I blame it on my wet shoes? Maybe. But no building housing 200 college students should have that slick of a floor, seriously. Luckily I emerged uninjured from the fall, just a little shaken.
Well those are the 12 days in Spain and now as I said, I'm heading to Dresden and Leipzig with Jenny. We are staying all three nights in Dresden, but will be traveling to Leipzig on Friday to check it out, too. Apparently the Hauptbahnhof there is the largest in Europe. Wow!
In other news, packing is WELL under way... and I officially bought way too much crap, lol. Things that were useful while I was here, but a pain in the butt to take home. I am leaving a lot of items in Ingolstadt at Gaby's. Also in other news, I think I have decided to finish my degree at UCF in the next year (I hope to graduate in August 2009, if not May) before going back to Germany. That would leave me with more options than before—meaning, internships AND real jobs—plus leave me more time to save money... interrupting the degree program takes a lot of work and getting it back in order afterward again also takes a lot of work..... not fun.
Today I called to reserve a biiiig table in the Extrablatt for Wednesday next week... I would honestly rather not have any sort of going-away party at all, but a lot of people have been asking about one and it seems like the custom here—if someone goes away for any amount of time it seems, they're gonna let people know ;-) I have to be out of my apartment by Tuesday at 10 am... after which I will be living with Lea the Australian until Friday morning, when Gaby and Tobi will pick me up to take me back to Ingolstadt with them. I fly two weeks from today at 12pm... in exactly two weeks, I will already be in the plane.
I will be back again to write about Dresden and maybe another time before leaving Koblenz for some last thoughts, and perhaps once while in Ingolstadt. But until then, the adventure continues...
