Granada, Granada, Granada

(Originally posted 2 April 2009 in: Spain, Granada)

I will not leave you in tension any longer; como esta en Granada? It all started promising on Saturday, now already 5 days ago. Ten minutes before the ultimate deadline to leave for the train station I managed to leave the house with a relative confident feeling I had not forgotten to pack anything muy importante. So far it has turned out I was right; the only thing I left was a shoe, so now I am stuck with one incomplete pair. Still, I have two complete pair left though so nothing to worry about (three actually, if you count the pair of running shoes, but no woman, except an American toursist maybe, would dare to be seen wearing them to work or school). So, with the help of my loyal porter, N, I managed to be at the train station on time for once. In fact, we were early, since I had mistaken the time because of perfect eyesight, which in this case worked out for the better. Since you all have experienced a Dutch train ride before I will cut the crap and skip to the interesting stuff. After a 2 and a half hour flight, during which I had no problem sleeping since I had only had three hours the night before, I arrived in coastal, touristic, palmtree-laned Malaga. I had imagined a very busy, big city with lots of flats and fat, red tourists, but it actually looked pretty exotic and charming. From the plane I could see the whole city, surrounded by hills, sandy colored houses with an Arabic touch and here and there the silhouette of a palmtree. Having had to close up my winterjacket tight and firm not a week ago, I now stepped from the plane just wearing a loose summer jacket and sleeveless top. I’ll tell you this; 22 degrees is a pretty welcoming temperature.

Right, I said; interesting stuff. Well, I took the bus and managed to find the hostel after a half hours walk, my spirits lifted by the surprising charm of the ‘horrid touristical’ inner city of Malaga. Damn, it was warm, there were palm trees and I was in Spain! The hostel turned out to be rather charming (my new favourite word) as well, but all I had energy left for was to lift my legs into the bed.

The next day I met E at the bus station where we were supposed to take the bus to Granada. The bus leaves about every hour, and E came rushing in 5 minutes before the bus at noon left. While I grabbed on to the bus driver, E managed to get tickets…for the next bus…at 14.00 o’clock. At least, we thought at 14.00 o’clock since that was what the guy at the info desk had told us, although our ticket said 13.45, which we figured must be boarding time or something. Anyways, the weather was hot and splendid so we didn’t mind waiting in the café across the street at all. Around 13.45 we thought; let’s get there a bit early this time. So ladieda we walked into the bus station and saw our bus, walked up to the bus and slowly started to get out our tickets to see whether it was indeed the right bus since it looked like it was leaving. While the bus pulled away, it slowly started to dawn on us that it was indeed the right bus and that it really was leaving. We started to utter some things and while we put up our arms the bus gently left the station. OK, we laughably scolded our retardedness and scurried back to the ticket office. There was a bolding chunky police sort of guy with sunglasses that grabbed our ticket and without many words changed our ticket for the next bus. So, we waited in the sun (how awful) for another hour and finally arrived in Granada around 6 o’clock.

Wearing just a t-shirt and even having exchanged my sneakers for slippers, the first thing that struck me (and my toes) was the cold. Damn, it was like 12 degrees or so; freezing!! (for Spain). But of course the weather was bound to different from that in Malaga since Granada is about 600 meters below sea level and an hours drive away from the sea itself. Which does means a pretty awesome view on the other hand. Literally on the foot of the Sierra Nevada, with mountain peaks of around 3000 meters, on a clear day you can see snowy mountain tops. But well, it was cold. We got on the bus and the first stranger with we landed ourselves into a conversation turned out to be a 19 year old blond Dutch girl that was also going to study Spanish. Pfff, not with the same organization. Nothing wrong with the girl herself, but 19 year old Dutch girls is not what Emily and I hoped to find in our class and apartment. We hoped to meet intereresting, international guys and girls of various ages with whom we could have some good talks and enrich each other with our company…or something like that. And guess what, the first thing we stumbled upon when we opened the door of our New Home were…more blonde 19 year old Dutch girls. Of course I had expected a certain percentage of teenagers, but not that high! The next day at the school didn’t show any more promising signs. The cafeteria was packed with 19 year old sucklings, mainly Dutch and female. That afternoon we got a city tour, and the other participants were a bunch of carefully plastered platinum blonde anorexic Norwegian girls and some spotty male sidekicks. All the girls did was cling to each others arms and make giggly pictures while our lovely teacher and tour guide was trying to update our knowledge on history. Horrible. Let us not make foul any more words on this unworthy bunch of nitwits (as I put my nose up in the air and make a little degrading sniff).

Anyway, the lessons are nice. We have lessons from 9.30 to 13.00 o’clock every day and are in a class with 4 others, of which 2 BDN’s (blonde Dutch 19 year olds), a quiet nerdy Chinese girl and James, a 28 year old Australian guy (he seriously looks like 21 though). James is a nice guy and has a very amusing accent when he speaks Spanish. So, now that I just made a positive remark about someone, allow me to bitch on the others for a bit. But let’s be clear here, all the people I have met so far are nice enough, good people, BUT…our classmates are dumb man! I am talking about university level-educated or potential university level students, and g-sus hell, especially one, is so SLOW. After having talked about comer (eating) for like 15 minutes she still manages to say, What is comer?. Aha, AHA, now that is DUMB (this was just an example). Especially annoying is when she doesn’t get something, usually something pathetically easy, and the slight panic she than slides into; nervously she looks around, saying what, what, I don’t understand, wheh wheh WHEH. The teachers are great though, very friendly and patient, and they explain everything in Spanish so you pick up a lot from that as well. So, the tempo of the lessons are quite slow and easy, but you still learn a lot of new stuff, so the lessons are ok. The atmosphere is quite nice too (except for these moments of wanting to sigh straight in the face of that girl and roll my eyes), I am quite happy to be there! Spanish itself is pretty great too! It is pretty easy to pick up with 6 years of French and some Latin and Greek as a background so that makes it even more enjoyable. Speaking is something I do need to practice a lot though, but the listening is surprisingly easy (I am talking about following the stories of the teachers; the streets are still out of my league of course).

And then; Granada, Granada, Granada. Very beautiful city. What surprises me the most is that the nice, old part of town, which in cities like Utrecht and Leiden are only 50 meters by 50 meters, is just BIG. The cute, hilly, cobble stoned alleyways don’t seem to end! There are dreamy romantic little squares all over the place and the Arabic influences make the yellow, rugged, cute little appartments look even more charming (yes, charming). I’ll try to put up some pictures, because images can speak louder than words. Oh yes.
We live just on the edge of the city centre, in an apartment big enough for 7, but only occupied by 4 at the moment. It is a bit dirty and nasty and breaking down but i’ve had worse so not too much to complain. One thing I do complain about, a lot, is the fact our apartment is situated sort of in the middle of a very busy roundabout. Especially buses like to pull up straight in front of our window, and to complete the orchestra they are also working on the roads and by the look of it they will be during the coming month as well. I was kind of freaked out the first day when I couldn’t hear what E was saying because the window was open and I woke up at seven due to the lovely sound of car engines. So far my fantasy about chilling on a sunny balcony with red flowers hanging from the balustrade. No man overboard though, since his sort of forces us to get out of the apartment a lot, which we have been doing indeed. And I must say I am getting used to the noise now. It really is NOISE though. There is a possibility to change apartments so I’m gonna check that out. But secretly E and I are also looking to maybe get a flat that we dreamed of (sunny balcony included), there seems to be no shortage on the house-rent market. But we’ll need a job first. Working on that.

And did I tell you you get free tapas with every drink you order? It is great. In Spanish bars you don’t sit, you stand. And you speak loudly and eat tapas while you drink. People seem to get out a lot more than in Holland. Just a drink after work, in the break or instead of cooking at home. Promising.
To conclude; Granada is beautiful, has a good atmosphere and seems like a pleasant place to be. Challenges for the near future are making Spanish friends, meeting more (interesting) people, learn the grammar and the vocabulary, and maybe find a job and a new flat. Enough on the agenda I would say.

I will keep you updated!!
Buenos noches!