Dear friends,
Greetings and cheerful tidings from Germany, where we have just returned to from a trip to Spain!
Last years fall holiday culminated with a surprise visit to a German emergency room where I received 11 brand new birthday sutures in my left leg for “kicking a train.” This year’s trip required significantly less hospitalization but instead had its own interesting and unexpected turn of events. Our original plan was to spend 7 days in southern Spain; our final total was 8 days and we found our way north to Madrid, half way up the country. How did we miss our mark by 250 miles and one day you may ask? The answer is simple, bankrupt airlines.
The idea for the trip started with an e-mail I received from V-Bird airlines, a discount carrier we’ve flown a few times over the summer with generally favorable results. 50 euro roundtrip tickets to Malaga, Spain seemed like an excellent way to take a fall break from reality. We had never heard of Malaga but a brief look in the trusty Lonely Planet guide told us that it was the common arrival point for tourists going to the half baked sea-side resorts of Costa del Sol. Some quick checking on maps revealed that Malaga was reasonably close to Gibraltar and Seville and based on some later advice from Krista’s parents we added Granada to our list of travel destinations. Reservations for a rental car were made and off we headed to the airport; flying from Germany to Malaga, Spain.
Costa del Sol (Malaga) can most accurately be described by the phrase “lots of Brits.” If it was warm in Brighton, England, if the beaches had fine sand instead of apple sized rocks and if the sun made a consistent showing, there would have been no need for Costa del Sol. As it stands, Costa del Sol seems to fill this vacancy in the English landscape. While administratively part of Spain, the area is rife with the construction of mirror image villas. These are for the rent and retirement of the English speaking tribes from the north. Signage in English is plentiful and real-estate offices abound. In any case, the place is actually fairly pleasant. It wears its tourist-trap credentials like a badge of honor and does in fact have very nice beaches. A day walking the beaches there was nice but sufficient.
Leaving Malaga and Costa del Sol we picked up our travel companion, a “Smart Car” that we immediately named Pepe. Pepe was the Sancho Panza in our Don Quixote play and really deserves most of the credit for making the whole trip a success. Ever since seeing my first Smart Car in Europe I’ve been eager to try one out. Being an ultra-compact car it is fairly underpowered, which I think would have been frustrating driving on the Autobahns of Germany or even on North America’s highways, but in the more leisurely driving of southern Spain the car performed fine on all roads. It took a little getting used to the constant gear changes that occurred in the 6 speed automatic transmission but once you got a feel for it the car was a lot of fun to drive. Inside the cities the SmartCar proved invaluable. Its tiny size made it possible to park anywhere as well as easily perform the frequent red-light lane changes that lost tourists turn into their travel dance. Pepe was excellent.
Our first driving destination was Granada. Unbeknownst to us it was a four day holiday weekend in Spain and finding a hotel room proved challenging. At the brink of giving up in desperation and trying to sleep two inside Pepe, we miraculously found a great hotel with one very small room to spare. It was perfect. Granada is a terrific town. Three things make Granada great; (1) The “old Muslim city” on the hillside with its winding streets and scattered cafes, (2) The Alhambra palace overlooking the city, (3) the café quarter down at the juncture between the old city and new.
At this point in the story its worth noting that it is nearly impossible to get the attention of a Spanish waiter on a busy day; there is a subtle art to it and subterfuge is required. As a rule Spanish cafes appear to be ludicrously understaffed. This usually means a single waiter whose job it is to madly run back and forth between the outdoors, the indoor tables and the kitchen trying to keep things moving in one way or another. The process is hopeless and fairly comic; sympathies sit squarely with the waiter until you are either desperately hungry or in a real rush to leave. Since the waiter is overtaxed and undertipped he makes every effort not to establish eye contact with any new potential sources of additional demands as he is literally frantically running back and forth trying to accomplish the tasks he already has. If you stare at the busy waiter, he will never return the stare and will generally stay clear any table that looks like it will generate extra service requests; neither impatience nor passivity will bring you rewards. Surprise tactics are what’s needed. The only hope you have of getting the waiter’s attention before closing time is trapping him like an unsuspecting hiker caught in a fox trap. To do this it is best to feign total disinterest, perhaps even opening a book and starting to read; this demonstrated lack of need puts you in the waiter’s “safe zone” and in time he will venture unsuspectingly into your proximity as he travels between the tables and kitchen. Once he is close enough and almost about to pass you must seize the initiative and establish sudden eye contact; in desperate situations this may require quickly shifting your chair into his path or making an abrupt flailing gesture. The momentary confusion will draw his attention. Once eye-contact is established the friendly waiter knows the gig is up and will quickly either take your order or get you the bill. It took several days of constant café practice to hone the necessary skills so be patient, it will come.
From Granada we drove west to Seville. The highlight of Seville is definitely the Alcazar place. The gardens and surrounding buildings are nothing sort of magnificent. We spent several hours just lounging around, resting and reading on the grounds of the palace. It’s just plain great.
It was in Seville that we found out that our airline had “ceased to exist as a going concern”, meaning basically it went belly-up. Fundamentally they just ran out of money, stopped flying planes and changed their web site to say something along the lines of “so long and good luck” (www.vbird.com); perhaps an appropriate end for an airline who’s slogan in life was “changing the rules of flying” – and so they did. We would not have known any of this was it not for Mark and Kerri, who back in Aachen, Germany happened to go to the V-Bird web site looking for trip possibilities. Mark and Kerri called us (laughing) and mercifully with this advance notice we were able to make plans to fly back to Brussels (not our original airport) by way of Madrid (not our original exit point) on Saturday (a day and a half later than planned). Mark and Kerri were kind enough to pick us up in Brussels and drive us back to the German airport where our car was (thanks!).
Leaving Seville we pointed Pepe down south to the coast and drove though Jerez (where Sherry is made) and down though Tarifa (a big windsurfing and kite-boarding town and the southern most point of Europe – you can see Morocco!). Just east of Tarifa we crossed the border into Gibraltar. Gibraltar is an oddity, being a giant British hunk of limestone at the southern end of Spain. It’s an amusing place to visit if for no other reason that it’s such a bizarre invention. This year is apparently the 300 year anniversary of the British ownership of the rock and “1704 – 2004, keep Gibraltar British” t-shirts were on sale everywhere. On this one I have to side with the Brits; the place just would not be the same without them.
The funniest thing that happened to us in Gibraltar was that Krista got mugged by a Gibraltar monkey for a stick of chocolate she had in her hand. Rather than grabbing the chocolate from her in any forcible way the monkey just appeared and made indications that perhaps he’d like the chocolate and it might be a good idea to surrender it. After a few seconds of hesitation (400 pound penalty for feeding the monkeys) the chocolate was thrown and the monkey went after it. Gibraltar monkeys are all over the hill and apparently they know the pecking order better than us tourists. Monkey 1, Tourists 0. Beyond walking the rock, the Great Siege Tunnels are the big thing to check out in Gibraltar. There carved into the side of the hill and well worth a tour.
Leaving Gibraltar we dropped the car off in Malaga and hopped a train up to Madrid. Madrid turned out to be a terrific city; great weather, very lively, and a surprisingly good looking city.
That’s it for the Spain trip!
Hope you are well and hope to see you sometime soon! -ivo
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