And now the companion piece – the emotional highs and lows of a month in Spain.
I have already written about cheering at a Trinquet match, relishing a full day at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and learning about, and trying my hand at, street art. As a follow-up to a previous ‘low’, I am also happy to report that I have been reunited with my longtime teapot. It is now traveling with me, and bringing me simple joy every morning. And here are a few other ’highs’ from Spain:
Surprise Pizza: On the second night in Valencia, my roommates and I ventured out to find a restaurant for dinner. This was at 7:30pm, which is well before most restaurants open in Spain. With a heavy reliance on GoogleMaps for restaurant icons and related ratings, reviews, and operating hours, we aimed for La Finestra. It is a pizza place. It is wonderful for two main reasons:
- Reason #1: It has some communal tables. We wound up sitting with a local couple who were regulars. They explained how to order, and then gave us lots of advice and recommendations for our month.
- Reason #2: It has no detailed menu, hence why we needed instructions!
All of the pizza was cooked in a wood-fired oven, and was all the same small size. Our order was three glasses of red wine and six pizzas. The red wine was poured immediately, into tumblers, which I guess technically were made of glass. Over time, each of the pizzas were delivered to us, with whatever ingredients the chef was inspired to make in that moment. They were each a surprise. We had spinach pizza, chicken pizza, Hawaiian pizza, three cheese pizza, zucchini pizza, sausage pizza….It was all delicious, and it was fun waiting to be surprised by what was next to arrive. We went back there for our last roommate dinner of the month and were delighted again.
Flamenco Class: My parents put me in ballet classes and ice skating lessons when I was five years old. This was, I later found out, because my feet were crooked and they thought these activities might help me walk straight. It was apparently as simple as that. One or both of the activities were successful in that mission fairly quickly (and perhaps over corrected!), but across a decade, they were also successful in exposing me to multiple forms of dance – ballet, jazz, modern, polka, farandole, waltz, tango, rhumba, foxtrot, etc. I was in no way the most elegant or charismatic dancer in the group. This was not a direct career path. But I was keen to understand it all – the time of the music, the pattern of the steps, the mechanics of the moves, the science of the footwear and the surfaces. (These all now sound like hints of the future engineer!) I was also excited to discover that nursery rhymes and pop music weren’t the only rhythms out there. One form of dance that I didn’t learn, but have admired for a while, is flamenco. All of the performers create and support the rhythm together on stage – some with hand claps, some with guitars, and some with their amazing footwork. So as soon as I heard that I could participate in a flamenco lesson (IN SPAIN!), I signed up. It was all the better that my lesson fee was being channeled to a program that was providing free dance and music lessons to area youth, as a way to build confidence and expand their opportunities*. During the class, I fondly remembered many similar sessions in front of mirrors learning new steps, and repeating them over and over again; playing with different hand gestures; laughing at bumping into a friend when one of us turned the wrong way (and then inevitably the other would repeat soon after); and trying with great flourish to imitate the fancy moves we had seen professional dancers do. When my flamenco class finished, the two local teenagers who had joined us to talk about the program, commented on how impressed they were that we remained focused and worked the entire time. Apparently the classes with their friends have a little less discipline, and we showed them what was possible. I wondered about when I may have developed the discipline to concentrate on something for a full 90 minutes. Good bet it was in a studio or an ice rink, learning to dance.
Santa Hat and Cheesecake: I entered something like a dollar store just before Christmas. As I did so, I passed a display of holiday decorations, including elf hats, reindeer antlers, and Santa hats. My initial reaction was that none of this was for me, but then I took a pause to challenge myself on why not. Why did I so quickly, and actively, dismiss the image of wearing a Santa hat? My honest answer was that I didn’t want to look foolish. My deeper honesty said, “All the more reason to buy the thing!” I picked one out, bought it, and wore it for two days straight. It catapulted me into the holiday spirit when I had few other springboards – I wasn’t with my family; there was no snow; there was no trimming of a tree with my ornaments; there were no cheesy Hallmark movies. With the hat, there were smiles as I passed people on the street, as I cooked with friends for our potluck, and as I hurried over to the grocery store. One red hat (with sparkles) snowballed into a lot of happy people. And what was the original errand at the dollar store you ask? Find a spring form pan. I have loved making, and sharing, a marbled chocolate cheesecake since I first tried the recipe in high school. It was printed on the side of a box of chocolate graham cracker crumbs, and it turned out to be so amazing that I cut the box and still reference that piece of cardboard decades later. I had the idea of making it for our potluck as a connection to home, even though I don’t directly connect it with the holidays. There were a few improvisations with local offerings for the type of crumbs for the crust and the type of cooking chocolate, but it came out as awesome as ever, and was a big hit with requests for future appearances. Now I’ll see how long the $5 springform pan survives traveling the world!
Star Wars: I remember when I saw the original Star Wars movie. For what felt like weeks to me as a kid (though may have only been days), I was eagerly waiting for the night that my Dad had put on the calendar as our movie night. That very day though, as I was leaving summer camp, a counselor noticed that I seemed to have a lot of mosquito bites and she looked a little concerned – but I guess she figured my parents would handle it from there. I had heard of the chicken pox. I had heard that you stay inside for a few weeks when you have it. I had a very strong wish to spend the night at the movies with my Dad. So, I negotiated. If we weren’t absolutely sure it was the chicken pox, then we should go. Which we did. I LOVED the whole thing – the land cruisers, Leia, lightsabers, and popcorn! We took one step out of the theater and by the look on my Dad’s face, he was sure then that I had the chicken pox. But I was a happy kid, with a full heart and a full imagination, and no cares about about staying home for weeks. I’m not a deep enough fan to recall when the franchise moved from being the big summer movie to being the Christmas break movie. But the switch actually made it easier to continue my connection of Star Wars to family time. With Rise of Skywalker, I wondered if I would see it dubbed in Spanish, on my own. But I found an English showing**, and a few travel mates to share the popcorn. Plus – we saw it on OPENING NIGHT!?! Apparently the rush for tickets that happens in the USA, is not a universal phenomenon. I bought reserved seat tickets three days beforehand. Oh, and I LOVED the whole thing – the land cruisers, Leia, lightsabers, and family.
Spain had plenty of highs, and overall, I felt very comfortable living in Valencia, and enjoyed it. Nothing is perfect though. Here are a couple of lows:
Olfactory Overdrive: My version of a very slight allergic reaction to a scent, is a short cough. I first noticed it when I heard my Mom and I do it at exactly the same time when a woman with a strong perfume passed us in a museum. Usually the situations are rare and brief, but the cough started happening a lot in Spain. And I learned that if I try to be polite and stifle that cough, and my body really doesn’t like whatever I sniffed in, then it will escalate to sneezing. It is a very odd experience to cough and then immediately sneeze. It becomes very apparent, to all around me, that my systems aren’t tolerating something. I haven’t pinned down what the culprit was, but I did make sure to have a handful of cough drops at the ready. Thankfully, the offender wasn’t “rose essence” because that hung around for a LONG time. Sometimes yoga instructors will use an essence, like lavender, at the very end of a class, as they provide slight adjustments to improve Shavasana. One day in Spain, the instructor said she was going to use a rose essence, and to let her know if we didn’t want it, as some people really don’t like it. I tried it. Turns out – I am one of those people who really doesn’t like it. It’s one thing to try it, not like it, have a shower, and close the experience. It’s another thing for your room mate to smell it in the hallway you walked through, getting the Spanish version of Febreeze for your clothes, keeping the windows in your room open, and showering multiple times. Wow that was intense! I believe there are many variations of essences, and this may be one unique to the region, and I don’t want to give one of my favourite flowers a bad reputation. It was, however, a long couple of days for my nose.
Flow of the Day: In Valencia, many shops lock up by pulling down a full metal shutter. At that point, a wall sign may be the only thing identifying its existence, but even that may be missing. Early in the morning, I could walk a whole block, and have no idea if it had abandoned stores or thriving businesses, though a café would be open on the corner, happy to sell me churros and chocolate. The yoga studios didn’t start classes until 9am. Stores like pharmacies might lift their shutters around then, but they would close again around 2pm, just when the lunch spots opened – which I don’t think is a coincidence. (Per an earlier post, this is the best time to gather your friends and eat paella!) I quickly figured out that farmers’ markets closed at 3pm, while other stores reopened. The lunch spots would close for a few hours before reopening for dinner – which often wasn’t until 8pm or later. But some cafes would close after lunch and not reopen until morning. On weekends, I would see restaurants only starting to fill at 10pm for dinner. While the city was full of amazing food, this unwritten flow to the day presented real challenges to actually eating it! While all of this kept me guessing, the actual ‘low’ was when my upstairs neighbours would return home at the Spanish ‘normal’ of 1am, or host friends for dinner. It only takes one person with a heavy step in a hard shoe, or an uninsulated drain pipe, or a dragged chair (or all of the above) to wake me with the worry of something heavy landing on my head. (Is there anything between these floors?!) Ear plugs helped, as did some wine with dinner.
That’s a wrap on Valencia, Spain, and the third month of Remote Year. It was a very accessible city, and a good host for the holidays. I might pick a different apartment when I return. Adios!
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* The not-for-profit we were supporting with our flamenco lesson, was La Calle Baila. To learn a bit more about what they are doing, here is a video: <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm-k-z1uOIg> It is in Spanish but you can get an idea of the program and see how grateful and happy the kids are to be there. If you find a way to get English closed captions, then I’m told you’ll see the word gypsy used to describe the Romani people. It doesn’t carry the same negative connotations in Europe as it does in the US, so they ask viewers to please not think of it as offensive.
** When looking at movie listings in Valencia, a “VO” indicates the original version and a “VOSE” indicates the original version with Spanish subtitles. By default, without either of these markings, it will be dubbed in Spanish. Yes, Rise of Skywalker had already been fully dubbed for opening night, which might explain why our VOSE theater wasn’t full. No, Chewbacca had no Spanish subtitles.