A new home

In the chaos of the last couple weeks, I haven’t found a moment to write. Sorry, Mom. Now I’m here in sleepy Zafra with all the time in the world.

Barcelona was wonderful, aside from the beach robbery incident. We met some great people in the hostel and spent a week in noisy expat bars. One night Lindsey and I and a British friend went to an aggressively English pub to watch a soccer match. We ate paella, drank coffee and wine, and explored the enormous plazas, parks, and avenues that make up this lovely city. One this we found a to be a bit of a turn-off was the general attitude of the people. It’s the case in every big city, and I suppose you have to live in a place for a long while before you’re able to dig past those hard urban exteriors to the rational human beings within. It was frustrating though, to encounter such hostility. Waiters were rude to us, shopkeepers ignored us, and one barista refused to serve us for twenty minutes. It seems that the massive swarms of tourists that occupy every block of the city have fostered a general animosity towards outsiders, a logical but nonetheless discouraging fact of life here.

Deciding we had had our fill of the Mediterranean (an impressive feat in such an unendingly beautiful region) and acting not a little impulsively at the suggestion of our hostel’s manager, Lindsey and I decide to skip Valencia and head inland to Sevilla, a gorgeous little city in the southwestern part of the country. It’s my favorite stop on my journey with Lindsey and although it doesn’t offer the wild fun of Dublin, it easily surpasses it in beauty. It’s a bustling tourist hub at its center, where tapas bars and cafes line an ancient, uneven cobblestone road. Our hostel is at the center of this charming madness, and Lindsey and I spend most of our three days here drinking Spanish beer (not the best) in these fun little places.

On our second day, we venture beyond the center to the “tourist sites” our hostel has recommended. The tourist map they give us, which advertises a series of “impressive monuments,” turns out to be a terribly proportioned, cartoonish insult to cartography that leads us in circles through unmarked streets to decidedly unimpressive churches and monasteries. By the time we reach the fifth single-story, run-of-the-mill chapel, we’re rolling with laughter and go for a beer instead, deciding to stick to the center from now on.

Lindsey’s caught the cold that had me down for a while in France, and she seems to have been simultaneously hit with a vicious sinus infection. For my part, I’m dangerously low on money and beginning to panic a bit at the prospect of an apartment security deposit. So we pass on the long nights out and the €6 beers we splurged on in Barcelona. There’s a cute little café/pub right next door to our place with €1 beers (although we’re soon to discover that a Spanish beer is an American sip) so we settle into a booth. Lindsey and I stand out in Spain—blondes and redheads aren’t exactly common sights here—and the all-male bar staff immediately takes notice. After a couple beers we’re in a noisy political debate (a common occurrence throughout the course of our four-year friendship) and they’re laughing to each other, unaware of the conversation topic but clearly amused by our volume and obvious passion. They start bringing drinks before we request them, each time insisting that we stay after close to hang out. Our ‘maybes’ seem to give them confidence, and they keep them coming. At midnight we’re tired and drunk and Lindsey’s illness is starting to drag her down, so we split. Irritated, the bartenders charge us for every “free” beer they bought us.

The money situation is gradually turning into a crisis. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars more than I had budgeted, since Couchsurfing failed to come through (people are hesitant to host two people at once) and we’ve had to pay for hostels every night. Regretfully, I decide to leave Sevilla two days early and skip Madrid altogether, instead going straight on to Zafra to start the apartment hunt and hopefully save some cash. So Lindsey and I part ways and I take a slow, mostly-empty train through the unpopulated countryside to Zafra, my new home in the untouched reaches of western Spain.

When I first read about Zafra, I was terrified. It’s a tiny place, 15,000 inhabitants and a dot on only the most detailed of maps. There’s a train station, but none of the main rail companies bother to go through it. It attracts tourism for its classic Spanish beauty, but it’s mostly tourists from its own province, and only because it’s the only town of reasonable size for miles. I’ve lived in a state capitol, an overcrowded college town, and a sprawling metropolis of nine million people; nothing in my experience has prepared me to live in a place where the year’s most exciting event is a cattle expo.

But, as I should have known, Wikipedia is not a reasonable source for the formulation of an opinion. This town is lovely. At its center is a complex of two stone plazas, one large and one small, surrounded in which stucco buildings boasting dozens of balconies and lined with surprisingly large palm trees. A graceful, quiet fountain serves as the centerpiece of the Plaza Grande and the two combined have enough bars, cafes and restaurants to keep Levi and I busy for eight months. There’s a beautiful park, a dangerously tempting shopping street, and a movie theater. The people are friendly and welcoming and slightly less apt to stare at my hair than they were in Sevilla. This is a good place.

Trying to avoid more hostel fees and hoping to meet someone in my new town, I find Remedios on Couchsurfing. She’s a veterinarian in her mid-thirties who was born and raised here, and is just an incredibly sweet person. I couldn’t have found anyone better. She picks me up at the train station, offers me a comfy bed in her lovely house, shows me around town, and takes me out with her wonderful friends. One of those friends happens to be the owner of an apartment on the Plaza Grande. Because I am a friend of his friend, he promises to hold off leasing it to an interested party until I see the place.

As soon as I walk into the place, I know it was ours. It’s two steps from the Plaza Grande, with two balconies that overlook the plaza and a small street that leads to it. There’s a terrace in the back, open to the stars. A spare bedroom (everyone come visit!!), a nice kitchen (that I’m unlikely to use at all but where I’m sure Levi will make some magic), and fully furnished with surprisingly nice pieces, all for €350 a month. Unbelievable find. Jose Carlos even lets me sign the lease before I manage to come up with the money (“No worries, you’re a friend of Reme’s”). He brings over a big plant as a housewarming gift when I sign. Later on he comes by with a friend and a bottle of wine and welcomes me to the neighborhood. (After an evening of comparing travel stories, I discover I’m dying to go to Cuba)

I spend the next two days cleaning and organizing the place and just relaxing in it—after a month on the road I’m relieved to have a place to call home. I spend hours lazing in the living room with the balcony doors flung open, listening to the shouts of the Italian family at the pizzeria and the cheerful chatter of patrons at the café. As lovely and cozy as the place is, it feels a bit empty—it’s five weeks to the day since I’ve seen Levi, and I’m more than ready for him to arrive. This separation has been good, in a way; about a week into it we realized it simply couldn’t be permanent or indefinite, and a week after that we made the leap—he bought a plane ticket and I started searching for an apartment for two. We’ve both had a month of self-exploration and experiences to call our own, and that’s great etc etc but now it’s time. He gets here a week from tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier! Staying true to her role as my fairy godmother, Reme has been suggesting to all her friends that their children would benefit from the English lessons of an American boy, so once he’s settled in here the prospect of work is bright. I really can’t believe our luck.

Photo uploads are tedious on this site, and my connection is weak. Check my facebook for photos, coming soon!