First story from Spain
Aug. 16th, 2002 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gerbieAs I have written quite a few stories and jotted down notes for a few more, it might take a while. Don't expect lyrious descriptions about how nice Andalusia is though, you'll find them elsewhere on the web. My stories are just my perception.
Work trip
Obviously travelling for work isn't the same as travelling for leisure. Travelling for the sake of travelling I have called that on many occasions. I do not think that Bluefields in Nicaragua will stand out in the memory of many people who have been there. The road to get there will. That's what I mean with travelling for the sake of travelling. The main disadvantage of travelling for work is that you don't get to choose where you go. The advantage is obvious: The costs are put on the expenses account. I had already decided not to abuse that last rule though. Even when at home I would have had to eat and drink, so when I claim my flights and my lodging I think we've got a fair deal. I offer some spare time; they offer me a semi-paid vacation.
Visiting a student on her traineeship on Tenerife was a job I volunteered to do. The choice was obvious, there is only one other Spanish speaker in our department and she doesn't even work full time. Having worked a couple of seasons in the tourism industry, some of them as a holiday representative, I have become a bit allergic for mass tourism though. I planned 5 days. That would give me 4 complete days on the island, I was hoping to get my work done in 2, possibly 3 days, which leaves me a full day, possibly two do some exploring myself.
On the plane to Madrid, I sit next to two students going on a trip to Ecuador and Peru. Jealous would be an understatement if I have to describe my feelings, especially when I had to confess my destination to them. The fact that the girl next to me approached me with "U" (like several other languages Dutch has a formal and less formal way of describing people, "U" would be the equivalent of "Vous, Sie, Usted") hurt me even more. It showed I have grown older than I hoped that people would perceive me.
The second flight my seat had been taken by a youngster who sat down next to his girlfriend. In bad English, he tried asking me to sit on his chair, a few rows down. Generously I accepted, told him in Spanish and sit down in his seat, while he still murmurs another 'Tenk yoe'. I read a few chapters in my book and after the catering has gone, I close my eyes for a quick kip. I'm not a big fan of having to get up at 4.45am. It is the time of the day that I would prefer to switch off the light and start a good night's sleep until the time that most people start having their lunch. My ears tell me that we are going to land, I try to understand what the captain has to tell us. The Spanish version was as understandable as a middle wave radio station on a windy evening, his English as bad as the Hispanic toilet cleaner in New York who doesn't need to language to survive in his job. The lady in the window seat had picked up the local temperature though. 24 degrees, not 34 as I had deciphered and feared beforehand. I'm not a big fan of heat, though the countries I have enjoyed most while travelling all offer exactly those temperatures I dread most. 24 is even better than yesterday in the Netherlands, the thirty-something of the day before that shows that even my country gets tropical temperatures once in a while, be it only for about 4 days every year.
At the airport, I picked up a list of pensions. Although I am on expenses, I just couldn't manage to book a hotel room up front. Some habits are hard to lose. Improvisation is one of the essential factors in my way of experiencing travel. While waiting at the bus stop (why bother with a taxi?), I notice that dyeing your hair is back in fashion. Every single lady or girl that walks past, except the one standing next to me, the proverbial exception to the rule, has some sort of fake colour, with a weird purplish young girl as the top of the trendy ones. I take the local bus to Los Christianos, where I have to find a pension. Small problem: both maps I picked up at the airport hardly mentioned names of streets. The only one that is on both my list and one of the maps, has even two pensions. A good shot I guess. Up to the Avenida Suecia.
Second small problem: I hate walking around town with a map. It makes me feel like a tourist crying for help. So at the bus terminal I take a last glance and start walking a few blocks downhill, turn right and walk a few more blocks. Seems easily enough. The verb 'seem' is appropriate. Walking downhill is the easy bit, though even that is more complicated than I had hoped, because I took a little suitcase on wheels, instead of my old backpack that has served me for over a decade now. I have to look at least semi-decent when I do visit the hotel tomorrow, a shirt that comes from the bottom of the backpack usually doesn't get you invited to Christmas parties in my experience. I never knew walking with a little suitcase on wheels could be that complicated. It looks so easy on airports where businessmen in suits take it on board as hand luggage, that way saving time at arrival. In their world time is money, so it must be a good invention. In my world, the thing is not useful. Walking straight is still easy. Crossing roads, getting off and on pavements, avoiding obstacles and uneven paving aren't easy. The little bugger behind me is making movements like that resemble a caravan that refuses to go in the same direction as a car does. I'm sure everyone has seen it on consumer programs, disaster documentaries and B-movies.
So with a reluctant suitcase behind me, the sun appearing from behind the clouds and no street signs to tell me where I am, another bit of the stubborn me is coming up as well. I refuse to ask where to go, unless there is no other option left. The option I take is obvious: keep walking, at some point I have to find a place where I can rent a room for tonight. The town isn't big enough to hide them from me. Twice I sit down and get my map out, to try to localise where I am. The flaw with tourist maps is that they are sponsored, so all big hotels are on the map, as if that's necessary. In these places, there are two types of people staying. People on a package holiday, they have a transfer included and people with too much money, they usually take a taxi. Should there be an exception to that rule, the hotels are usually so big, with huge signs on their roof, that you can't possibly miss them. Whichever way, their guests do not need a map. In the meantime pensions and guesthouses are too small to get a mention on the map, but sometimes even so small that you'd walk past them in the street without noticing them. I've got years of experience in detecting them, but it still wouldn't surprise me should I have walked past the odd one already.
While walking through this town in the midday sun, it does occur to me that it isn't as bad as I had feared. Yes, there are all the big and ugly sky-high hotels and apartment blocks. Yes, every other shop is a souvenir shop or a (snack) bar. However, even the semi-permanent mini lunapark at the beach avenue doesn't give me shivers, as in-between all the tourist stuff I can still detect a small Spanish fishing town. The inevitable local OAP's hang around the town square, there are as many Spanish newspapers as foreign ones outside the kiosk and the narrow streets away from the beach are full of old cars, owned by the locals who want to park as closely as possible to their homes. That does mean that any car bigger than a Fiat-600 has to take a scenic detour to get through to the other end of the town.
Somehow, subconsciously, I must have done something correct, as suddenly I see a street sign with Avenida Suecia on it. I walk into the road and start looking for a clue where a pension might be. Obviously, I don't see one, so after a while I just have to get the list out of my bag and see which numbers they might have. 24a and 26 according to my list, next to each other therefore I assume. I cross the street at number 18 and see a small sign above a door in-between two shops. The name is from one of the pensions, the number from the other. I don't know if they have merged or if one mysteriously disappeared. I ring the bell and wait until an old lady opens the door a bit and peeks through. She is on the stairs, looking down at me and doesn't know if they have a single room available. She tells me to wait, while she fetches her daughter, closes the door and crosses the street, where she disappears down the steps to the next street down. I know they must have a room available, otherwise she could have just told me they are full. I sit down on the little wall before the shop next door and wait patiently, sweating more than I had thought possible with only 24 degrees.
The daughter arrives a few minutes later, starts of with telling me that they don't do single rooms, only doubles (sales pitch: I'll charge you a lot...), but she can give me a discount on a double. I will have to pay 22 euro's per night, my boss will be happy.
Work trip
Obviously travelling for work isn't the same as travelling for leisure. Travelling for the sake of travelling I have called that on many occasions. I do not think that Bluefields in Nicaragua will stand out in the memory of many people who have been there. The road to get there will. That's what I mean with travelling for the sake of travelling. The main disadvantage of travelling for work is that you don't get to choose where you go. The advantage is obvious: The costs are put on the expenses account. I had already decided not to abuse that last rule though. Even when at home I would have had to eat and drink, so when I claim my flights and my lodging I think we've got a fair deal. I offer some spare time; they offer me a semi-paid vacation.
Visiting a student on her traineeship on Tenerife was a job I volunteered to do. The choice was obvious, there is only one other Spanish speaker in our department and she doesn't even work full time. Having worked a couple of seasons in the tourism industry, some of them as a holiday representative, I have become a bit allergic for mass tourism though. I planned 5 days. That would give me 4 complete days on the island, I was hoping to get my work done in 2, possibly 3 days, which leaves me a full day, possibly two do some exploring myself.
On the plane to Madrid, I sit next to two students going on a trip to Ecuador and Peru. Jealous would be an understatement if I have to describe my feelings, especially when I had to confess my destination to them. The fact that the girl next to me approached me with "U" (like several other languages Dutch has a formal and less formal way of describing people, "U" would be the equivalent of "Vous, Sie, Usted") hurt me even more. It showed I have grown older than I hoped that people would perceive me.
The second flight my seat had been taken by a youngster who sat down next to his girlfriend. In bad English, he tried asking me to sit on his chair, a few rows down. Generously I accepted, told him in Spanish and sit down in his seat, while he still murmurs another 'Tenk yoe'. I read a few chapters in my book and after the catering has gone, I close my eyes for a quick kip. I'm not a big fan of having to get up at 4.45am. It is the time of the day that I would prefer to switch off the light and start a good night's sleep until the time that most people start having their lunch. My ears tell me that we are going to land, I try to understand what the captain has to tell us. The Spanish version was as understandable as a middle wave radio station on a windy evening, his English as bad as the Hispanic toilet cleaner in New York who doesn't need to language to survive in his job. The lady in the window seat had picked up the local temperature though. 24 degrees, not 34 as I had deciphered and feared beforehand. I'm not a big fan of heat, though the countries I have enjoyed most while travelling all offer exactly those temperatures I dread most. 24 is even better than yesterday in the Netherlands, the thirty-something of the day before that shows that even my country gets tropical temperatures once in a while, be it only for about 4 days every year.
At the airport, I picked up a list of pensions. Although I am on expenses, I just couldn't manage to book a hotel room up front. Some habits are hard to lose. Improvisation is one of the essential factors in my way of experiencing travel. While waiting at the bus stop (why bother with a taxi?), I notice that dyeing your hair is back in fashion. Every single lady or girl that walks past, except the one standing next to me, the proverbial exception to the rule, has some sort of fake colour, with a weird purplish young girl as the top of the trendy ones. I take the local bus to Los Christianos, where I have to find a pension. Small problem: both maps I picked up at the airport hardly mentioned names of streets. The only one that is on both my list and one of the maps, has even two pensions. A good shot I guess. Up to the Avenida Suecia.
Second small problem: I hate walking around town with a map. It makes me feel like a tourist crying for help. So at the bus terminal I take a last glance and start walking a few blocks downhill, turn right and walk a few more blocks. Seems easily enough. The verb 'seem' is appropriate. Walking downhill is the easy bit, though even that is more complicated than I had hoped, because I took a little suitcase on wheels, instead of my old backpack that has served me for over a decade now. I have to look at least semi-decent when I do visit the hotel tomorrow, a shirt that comes from the bottom of the backpack usually doesn't get you invited to Christmas parties in my experience. I never knew walking with a little suitcase on wheels could be that complicated. It looks so easy on airports where businessmen in suits take it on board as hand luggage, that way saving time at arrival. In their world time is money, so it must be a good invention. In my world, the thing is not useful. Walking straight is still easy. Crossing roads, getting off and on pavements, avoiding obstacles and uneven paving aren't easy. The little bugger behind me is making movements like that resemble a caravan that refuses to go in the same direction as a car does. I'm sure everyone has seen it on consumer programs, disaster documentaries and B-movies.
So with a reluctant suitcase behind me, the sun appearing from behind the clouds and no street signs to tell me where I am, another bit of the stubborn me is coming up as well. I refuse to ask where to go, unless there is no other option left. The option I take is obvious: keep walking, at some point I have to find a place where I can rent a room for tonight. The town isn't big enough to hide them from me. Twice I sit down and get my map out, to try to localise where I am. The flaw with tourist maps is that they are sponsored, so all big hotels are on the map, as if that's necessary. In these places, there are two types of people staying. People on a package holiday, they have a transfer included and people with too much money, they usually take a taxi. Should there be an exception to that rule, the hotels are usually so big, with huge signs on their roof, that you can't possibly miss them. Whichever way, their guests do not need a map. In the meantime pensions and guesthouses are too small to get a mention on the map, but sometimes even so small that you'd walk past them in the street without noticing them. I've got years of experience in detecting them, but it still wouldn't surprise me should I have walked past the odd one already.
While walking through this town in the midday sun, it does occur to me that it isn't as bad as I had feared. Yes, there are all the big and ugly sky-high hotels and apartment blocks. Yes, every other shop is a souvenir shop or a (snack) bar. However, even the semi-permanent mini lunapark at the beach avenue doesn't give me shivers, as in-between all the tourist stuff I can still detect a small Spanish fishing town. The inevitable local OAP's hang around the town square, there are as many Spanish newspapers as foreign ones outside the kiosk and the narrow streets away from the beach are full of old cars, owned by the locals who want to park as closely as possible to their homes. That does mean that any car bigger than a Fiat-600 has to take a scenic detour to get through to the other end of the town.
Somehow, subconsciously, I must have done something correct, as suddenly I see a street sign with Avenida Suecia on it. I walk into the road and start looking for a clue where a pension might be. Obviously, I don't see one, so after a while I just have to get the list out of my bag and see which numbers they might have. 24a and 26 according to my list, next to each other therefore I assume. I cross the street at number 18 and see a small sign above a door in-between two shops. The name is from one of the pensions, the number from the other. I don't know if they have merged or if one mysteriously disappeared. I ring the bell and wait until an old lady opens the door a bit and peeks through. She is on the stairs, looking down at me and doesn't know if they have a single room available. She tells me to wait, while she fetches her daughter, closes the door and crosses the street, where she disappears down the steps to the next street down. I know they must have a room available, otherwise she could have just told me they are full. I sit down on the little wall before the shop next door and wait patiently, sweating more than I had thought possible with only 24 degrees.
The daughter arrives a few minutes later, starts of with telling me that they don't do single rooms, only doubles (sales pitch: I'll charge you a lot...), but she can give me a discount on a double. I will have to pay 22 euro's per night, my boss will be happy.
