Ethtoy en Ethpaña

my favorite little gitana

i love this kid. she’s my homey:

one of the hardest things for me here has been making friends; even after almost 3 years it’s still difficult to carry on a conversation in andalucian spanish, sometimes because the accent is just too darn strong and sometimes because i just don’t know what to talk about. most of the folks i meet here are 30-somethings who’ve never lived outside their tiny hometown, who’ve never seen “arrested development” or put on a play or had an m.i.a.-fueled glow-in-the-dark dance party. we come from such different places that can be very difficult to reconcile without a couple of drinks in me. so what happens is i end up doing most of my bonding with the under-18 set. friends’ kids, my students… i don’t mean it in a creepy way, it’s just easier for me to communicate with someone with whom i know exactly where i stand. kids are always themselves, that’s their charm! even when they try to be manipulative or lie to get their way their faces are a dead giveaway. especially nai’a.

nai’a is such a little punk-rocker already, even though she doesn’t look it in the photo. her parents have trained her well: she skateboards, rides a pink plastic motorcycle, makes scary faces at you over the dinner table, draws tattoos on her arms with pen, and can make the sign of the devil since a very young age:

of course it’s all her parents’ fault. tony and nicole aren’t your typical overprotective, hands-off andalucian parents. she’s an artsy german seamstress and he’s a harley-riding rocker who grew up in germany, so they come at the whole parenting thing from a refreshingly real angle. no pimped-out strollers or ruff collars or private preschool english classes here–just good music, fun toys, and down to earth people.

when we show up at tony and nicole’s house for dinner nai’a literally throws herself on us (i almost dropped her once when she caught me unawares), showers us with hugs and kisses, and then spends the next couple of hours twistin’ to elvis, singing along to “the muppet show” and stealing food from our plates with a mischievous little grin on her face. she puts on quite a show and makes me feel like i have someone here who really cares about me… it’s not the same as being with old friends or family but for now it’ll do.

you simply must see seville by carriage, dahling…

the last stop on the well family spanish tour was sevilla, but after 2 weeks abroad folks were getting more than a little tired and cranky. we took to arguing over things as banal as the air conditioning, and a hyperactive game of uno in our hotel room nearly turned into a family feud. luckily anna knew just how to cure what ailed us: a ride in a horse-drawn carriage.

i’d led my family down into the touristic heart of sevilla, right in front of the giralda, when anna spotted the horses. their stench in the spring heat made them pretty hard to miss, but didn’t gross her out enough to go running in the opposite direction. instead she demanded that we all just take a chill pill and hop on board–so we did.

our ride took us right into traffic and right past the tower of gold on the guadalquivír river:

choking on exhaust fumes and terrified we were gonna get rear-ended by awful spanish drivers, we continued down-river to the parque de maría luisa, an oasis of shade in the sun-drenched city:

the park is famous for its ridiculous amount of fearless pigeon residents who’ll do anything for a free meal, including perch on your outstretched arms:

the park is also home to several arab-inspired museums built as exhibition halls for the 1929 iberoamerican expo:

as you turn to head out of the park and back towards the city center, you’re greeted with a commanding view of plaza españa, the prettiest public space in all of spain and inspiration for george lucas’ star wars:

on the ride back to the cathedral we came across a befuddled group of tourists trying to make sense of a banner announcing the upcoming 15-m protests:

a couple of purty government buildings:

the tobacco factory where carmen of operatic fame worked rolling cigars:

i’ll admit, i’d been skeptical of the whole carriage ride thing since climbing on board, but anna really knows how to travel:

when we got back to the plaza del triunfo where the driver had picked us up, anna demanded another go round, but at 50 euros a pop that was not happening so we piled onto the ground in plebian fashion:

we spent the rest of our time in sevilla dragging anna from one end of the city center to the other, snapping pics of colorful flamenco accessories and giant bougainvillea flowers along the way:

and of course dad had to get a pic of the little shop in a hidden-away plaza where the nuns sell homemade sweets and knitted baby clothes:

i love sevilla and if it wasn’t so far away from home i could really see myself living there. it’s all flowers and tapas bars and sunlight and architecture so gorgeous you could just eat it, especially on a spring evening at sunset:

cartaya’s really not as cute as it looks…

it’s funny, some of the photos my dad took as an awe-inspired tourist on his first trip to spain don’t match up at all with the image that i have in my head of these places. like cartaya, for example. i’m looking at these photos almost a year later and wondering, “where the hell is this cute little house?” he made a dinky little pueblo look downright quaint!

having my family come visit really gave me a new perspective on a place that i’d seen before as burdensome and boring. the only free time i’d ever spent in town was while waiting for the bus home from work, and that always seemed like more than enough. but really, i’m living in sunny andalucía, surrounded by good people, working a job i don’t hate, and making enough money to travel around europe and save up a tiny nest egg for the future… boredom schmoredom, i have absolutely nothing to complain about.

showing the fam around the end of the world

i spend so much time in sagres it’s like my second home over here and it’s way (read: infinitesimally) prettier than huelva, so mom and dad were pumped to finally get to see it in the flesh. and despite a couple of grey days, it did not disappoint:

because the weather was so fickle during our stay, we basically just took my family on a driving tour of the costa da vicentina, stopping here and there to dash through a ceramics shop or hunt for shellfish in a tidal pool:

anna couldn’t have cared less about the scenery but i think mom and dad were appropriately impressed. and i know they loved the fact that the bartender at our favorite restaurant let my sister follow her around all evening and that you can buy black-eyed peas at the grocery store and that you can rent an entire apartment for 20 euros a night. sagres is really not a bad place to get away to.

back in huelva

since my family hadn’t seen much of huelva when we first got in from barcelona (not that there’s all that much to see), when we drove back from the pueblos blancos i wanted to show them the things in the city that most resemble sights. like the main square with a dinky little christopher columbus statue:

and my favorite pedestrian street where you can get real gelato, organic peanut butter, local music, and the same boring clothes as everywhere else in spain:

not that impressive, but better than nothing.

my fam was pretty taken with the little beach town where they stayed, punta umbría. dad got up early every morning to run and while jogging he took pictures of the fishing boats in the harbor:

at night we went out for a stroll along punta’s main drag, calle ancha, literally the wide street. it’s always full of people and lined with typical andalucian shops and makes for a nice little outing.

the next morning my family and came over to the house for brunch: cheesy eggs, hash browns, sugary spanish pastries and chocolate-covered strawberries courtesy of stephie the texan and her spanish hubby juan ángel. then we drove out to mazagón to show mom and dad the nearly nonexistent waves and how much danny & his friends love them. it was really cute to watch everyone hop on their boards and go in together, and the ‘rents were mildly impressed with danny’s fancy footwork on a longboard.

we left the surfers in the water and continued west to el rocío, the home of the most popular virgin in spain, la blanca paloma, and the annual destination of 1 million pilgrims each may. it’s like being in a wild west film, dad was looking for clint eastwood around every corner:

and then it was back home to get ready for a couple days in sagres!

don’t go to ronda in a tiny car on a rainy day

after a couple days spent hanging around the hotel room with my sister and staging miniature blow-ups with my parents, my time in granada had come to an end so we piled into our little european rental car and followed the gps’ directions to ronda, the capitol of the pueblos blancos. the gps wasn’t taking us the way i’d come with danny a few months back but since we were coming from the opposite direction i didn’t think much about it. that is, until i realized it was telling us to do the exact opposite the highway signs advised. but since dad is a firm believer in the power of the gps, we trusted the little bugger right up the narrowest, winding-est street in town. only thing is, it had been raining all day and the cobblestones were wet and slippery. and oh yeah, our car weighed about 50 kilos. so to make a long, tense story short, we got stuck about halfway up the hill and an andalucian bystander had to take the reins from dad and gun the car rest of the way up–with us in it. dad was pissed, the passerby were highly entertained, and mom, anna and i were more than a little nervous. it didn’t help that mom and i had just had our nastiest explosion an hour earlier on our way there. so after all that negative juju it’s no surprise that our trip to ronda ended as quickly as it began, and we turned tail and got the hell out of town. it’s a shame because it’s spectacularly beautiful, but with all that anger boiling up in the car, it’s best that we were on our way.

we’d all calmed down by the time we came round to grazalema, and lunch was actually a pleasant affair. it was still drizzly and grey out by the time we left the restaurant, and dad was feeling confident enough to take on the curvy, one-lane sierra road, wet pavement and all. the rest of us were even more nervous than we had been back in ronda, but dad’s derring-do paid off. raindrops and killer scenery made for a stunning drive:

the ‘rents were pretty impressed when we first caught sight of zahara’s old moorish hilltop fortress:

we were pretty drained after our emotional roller coaster of a day so we didn’t even stop for coffee, but i think the landscape really made an impression on my parents. i snapped a photo of what seemed to me to be a fairytale view of zahara as we drove across the lake on our way back to huelva:

i went to granada and all i saw was the alhambra

after crossing rolling hills and green fields, we arrived in granada just in time to find a parking space before they kicked off their semana santa festivities. downtown granada is impossible to navigate without a gps, and semana santa processions just make the city center a giant mess of closed avenues and one-way streets. then there’s the whole sector that’s banned to all traffic except taxis and buses, it’s a total follón. thank god dad ignored my advice to drive right up to the hotel to drop us off, we could have gotten a hefty fine.

our digs were right on the main drag, across the street from the corte inglés department store and just blocks away from rhea’s apartment (where i sought refuge one night after too much family time):

our time in the hotel in barcelona repeated itself and anna and i camped out in our giant room, leaving only to eat and see the alhambra.

that poor room was in pieces by the time we left it: we’d ripped the shower head off the wall (in all fairness, it was already loose) and pulled the curtains down on our heads when mom accidentally yanked the curtain rod out of the ceiling. but we managed to neither get kicked out or fined, so that’s a good thing! it was actually a pretty stellar place, considering: a rooftop pool with views of the cityscape (the pool was closed but the roof was open), sweet and understanding receptionists, a ridiculous breakfast buffet, a chatty waiter, and cheap yummy food. highly recommended.

but seriously, despite my desperate excursion to rhea’s piso and churros in an old churrería, i barely left the place! our only outing as a family was up to the alhambra, and we almost didn’t make it. the alhambra is up on a hill overlooking the city center and anna straight-up refused to get out of the taxi when we pulled up. she’d been away from the comforts of home for a week at that point and had had enough, thank you very much. we took a quick bench-break and mom worked her magic so after 20 minutes anna was ready to go again and we headed into the grounds.

la alhambra is para flipar. it’s in a green, wooded area that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into another world far removed from dry, yellow andalucía, and the first thing you see when you enter are the lush gardens:

the alhambra is a big complex of several palaces and fortresses, there’s even a chunk that looks more like a little spanish village than any fancy moorish palace. we first wandered through the drizzle to the generalife, the 14th century villa built up the hill from the main palace:

the path across the hill is more like a hedge maze through fruit trees and vines and roses, and when you climb up the narrow stairs to enter the palace, you’re greeted with the prettiest courtyard i think i’ve ever seen (not that i’m a courtyard expert or anything):

the alhambra is such a strange combination of architectural styles, part square block fortress, part carved pillars and moorish arches, part roman amphitheater, part wooden balconies and ceiling beams. you can see a bit of the visual diversity here:

here you can see the arabs’ symmetrical perfection being swallowed up by the exterior wall of holy roman emperor charles v’s ridiculously out-of-place coliseum of a palace:

charles v had very different taste from the moorish kings who lived in the palace before him:

maybe the most famous part of the entire alhambra is the islamic decoration on the interior walls, ceilings, doors, and every other available surface. the cupolas drip plaster stalactites, the doorways are a veritable geometry class, and if math isn’t your thing you can learn a little arabic from the walls instead:

but as beautiful as the carvings are, i couldn’t get over the gorgeous view of the city from the alhambra’s windows and balconies:

4 hours in córdoba

the day after our bienvenidos barbecue we hopped into the tiny rental car and drove the three-ish hours to córdoba to see the mezquita. and really, that was about all we saw. we were only there for maybe 4 hours, just long enough to lose ourselves in the mad rush of spaniards vying for a place from which to watch the semana santa processions through the old jewish district. we had no map, no guide, nothing but enough common sense to follow the herd, and they led us right to it:

we got there just in time for the big show. i’d always wondered what the penitents must look like to someone who’s been to a real kkk rally (out of childish curiosity, not sympathy) and my parents were appropriately taken aback at first:

the robes come in a wide variety of colors–purple, maroon, cream, green, black (those are really sinister)–depending on the hermandad, the particular religious brotherhood. nobody’s really sure why the kkk took their inspiration from some super-religious, foreign catholics and i think the superficial connection really bugs spanish holy week fanatics.

these blue and white nazarenos were leading jesus into the courtyard of the mezquita on his way back to whatever church he came from:

close behind came his mother, crying under a beautiful blue canopy that looked like it was about to sway itself right off the platform:

once all the religious fervor had died down and the cordobeses had gone home, we jumped in line along all the other tourists who had gotten swept up in the crowd when trying to get into the mezquita.  we’d been standing around in the heat for half an hour when the ticket booth opened up, and just as we were moving up in line a spanish woman cut in front, bought tickets, and scooted out of the way as the british  fellow in front of us tried to take a swing at her. i went into my best obnoxious, take-no-shit andaluz and told her i thought she was a shameless idiot and while it didn’t make her give her tickets back, it made me feel a little better. my parents, on the other hand, were looking on in confused embarrassment, but i assured them that that was just the way of things in andalucía–you speak your mind, whether folks are listening or not.

entering the mezquita is like walking into another world: alien, ancient, and fantastical. it’s easier to imagine han solo striding under the striped archways than hundreds of moors at prayer:

it’s a giant open gallery made a religious patchwork: there are islamic cupolas and geometric patterns carved on the walls, then you turn the corner and stumble into a massive baroque catholic chapel dripping with plaster angels and saints:

it’s bizarre and overwhelming and exhausting to stroll through, sometimes you just need a nice place to sit down:

we dragged our sore feet back through the maze of the judería, and with a little luck managed to find our car and drive east towards granada.

“cafee cawn laychee”

man, mom loves her “cafee cawn lechee,” or café con leche if you’re gonna be picky about it. but seriously, there’s something about spanish coffee that makes it wildly more delicious than the burnt, watered down tar we pump out at some american coffeeshops. unfortunately, mom’s accent when she tries to order it at a cafetería comes out a lot more french than spanish and a lot more southern than french, but for my family it’s no longer called anything but “cafee cawn lechee.”

a little glass of “cafee” is really the only way to start the day while jet-lagged and getting prepped for an andalucian barbecue. and maybe it’s all the caffeine in said cafee that made dad take so darn many photos of our house before the bbq got started:

i’m not a big fan of my neighborhood, to be perfectly honest. it’s all cement and asphalt, the houses are exactly the same (tiny boxes made of ticky-tacky), and there aren’t nearly enough trees to go around. i miss boylan heights with its giant trees and overgrown yards, or the twin cities with their lakes and greenways. when i look out my window and there’s nothing but yellow and white concrete as far as the eye can see, it hurts.

so thank goodness folks started showing up and gave dad something else to snap photos of:

dad and danny made a quick olive run to the market in huelva and they didn’t even need a translator: go spanglish charades!

we’d hoped our pal with the olive connection would get us a little tour of the family farm (my mom is obsessed with olives, she liked the ones from huelva so much that every time i go home i have to bring her 2 kilos), but when danny asked about it his friend’s dad had no clue what he was talking about. so so much for olive tasting and touring.

that’s a real andaluz for ya, all “yeah, yeah, sure, i got ya covered” until it gets down to the wire, and then “huh? oh, yeah… oops.” maybe that’s why such a typical spanish phrase is “why do today what you can leave for tomorrow?” and the next day, and the next day, and the next. but the good thing is that this andalucian procrastination is equally matched by a carefree “no pasa nada” attitude–it’s all good! and that was something i really needed to keep in mind during my family’s time in spain.

welcome to huelva

as to be expected, just arriving in sevilla was a terribly stressful ordeal. picking up the rental car, finding the rental car, and getting the hell out of town was a gut-wrenching bilingual struggle between my confusion, dad’s confusion, and the confusing-as-all-get-out ring road that wraps around sevilla. oh, and then there was the mexican restaurant where we’d planned to have dinner that had just closed at 5 pm and wouldn’t re-open again until 8:30 (try explaining the andalucian eating schedule to a non-native, it’s mind-blowing). and let me tell you, none of us was too happy about having a late lunch of chips and soda from the gas station. but at least we were finally on the road to huelva.

we got in town just in time for a quick trip to the butcher shop to buy burgers for the bbq we’d planned for the next day. danny’s surfer-butcher pal treated my family to some jamón ibérico and even cranky-pants anna gave it two thumbs up. then when we got home it was my parents’ turn to treat us: mom had brought us a 5-lb. bag of reese’s cups & granny sent along some hats representative of our hick heritage (and now danny won’t take his off):

we showed the fam to their almost beachfront hostel in punta umbría, owned by a partyboy buddy of danny’s named free (no joke–he’s french)…

…and then dragged them out to dinner for some real choquero cuisine, aka seafood:

and then it was off to sleep, to dream of jamón y gambas!