The man with the dirty keffiyeh, whose name I never learnt, drove in the middle of the road, often, when night came, with the headlights off. His right hand was always occupied, either by a cigarette or mobile phone. He accelerated past signs which suggested, in English and Arabic, that he slow down, and let the vehicle’s enormous weight carry us with little control down long, whistling slopes.
Portugal
Claire and I stopped, panting, at the metal rods that closed a narrow road to traffic. We had been given detailed directions and followed them closely but were lost, struggling to find the home of Ivone and Vitor Mascarenhas or the remains of a small fishing village that apparently surrounded it.
My mother’s friend Eugenia had bought a house in Portugal, near the beach, not long before our trip started. I contacted her, hoping (as budget travellers do) that she could accommodate us for a few days. She said she could, at her home in Lagos, and suggested that her parents, who live in Cascais, just outside Lisbon, might be as willing. Ivone and Vitor Mascarenhas are her parents.
I felt somewhat ridiculous, wandering through the traffic in Cascais without a map, searching for the home of a couple in their early eighties, who I had never met and was not entirely sure could speak English.
After retracing my steps, I found the house only a short walk from where I had left Claire and the bags, and rang the bell. I introduced myself – Ivone refused to shake my hand, insisting that I bend down and kiss both cheeks – and darted off, rapidly explaining that I had to fetch my girlfriend. Continue reading Portugal>>
Fiesta Galicia
It was just before midnight and darkness masked the contours of the city. Street lights were sparsely spread and provided no more than a dim glow. I approached a taxi driver outside Pontevedra’s station exit, asking how much he’d charge to the Hotel Peregrino. He looked at me, disbelieving, and pointed diagonally away from the station. “Es alli”, he said, his voice hesitant, perhaps regretting his honesty. I thanked him, and we walked the two minutes down the road to what was our third ‘station hotel’, complete with locals drinking outside the bar, plastic chairs, and the familiar contrast of grot and appeal.
A bearded man of around fifty spotted us, glanced at our backpacks, and enquired as to whether we had a reservation. His English was nonexistent, but after a week in Spain I relished the satisfaction of basic communication, and hotel dialogues were my most practised exercise in Spanish. Continue reading Fiesta Galicia>>
Madrid
Claire and I arrived in Madrid late at night. We waited for a train to our hostel, watched by police with sniffer dogs, listening to the murmur of news and advertising emitted from wide screen televisions placed between the tracks.
We stayed at Pop Hostel, in a small, two bunk bed dorm. The room was quiet but sometimes too intimate and often awkward. The hostel was full of Brazilians, so full that Portuguese had replaced English as the language of first recourse. I was often addressed in Portuguese by strangers, then laughed at when I stammered back in confusion.
The building’s bottom floor was occupied by a small shop, selling basic foodstuffs. It was one of what would be referred to by every local I met as a “Chinese shop”. Open from early until late, it was busiest during the siesta hours when Spanish run supermarkets would close. These shops could be found everywhere. The attendants sat behind small, dark counters, closed in by the cluttered shelves, watching Chinese movies on nearby televisions. An agreement apparently exists between China’s government and Spain’s, which allows people to come over as self employed shop keepers, and sell, among other things, the cheap wares mass produced in China. Continue reading Madrid>>
Barcelona
Claire and I left France from Avignon in the early morning, when the city’s streets were for a moment quiet after another long festival night. The prospect of was travel easier and more exhilarating in the early morning, when the sun rising over a quickly moving landscape promised both a new place and a new day.
Two regional trains would carry us slowly into Spain, and then through it, to Barcelona. We boarded the first. It was made up of old fashioned carriages, the seats all confined to small compartments, which we reached through the narrow space that had been left to a corridor. In the compartment two short brown couches, sitting three to a side, faced each other, so that people sat with legs and arms intermingling. The carriage quietly conjured up black and white images of lovers solemnly parting on a platform edge, or of coated men, smoke and subterfuge, from an age when rail travel was glamorous. Continue reading Barcelona>>
