The rest of the trip was a lot of fun. In the afternoon (from where I last left off), we got bicycles and rode around the outskirts of old Cadiz (often pronounced Cádi with the z dropped in Cadiz). We then took our bikes about 3-4 miles down the coastal bike lane, and stopped at a beach side restaurant for a snack. We seemed to hit upon a German area, as the majority of the clientele were German, but there were several Spaniards there as well. I sat there and watched some organized beach soccer (teams and official jerseys and all, I’ve only seen pick-up beach soccer before, never as an organized sport).
That evening, walking around we happened upon an old sherry bar, with giant old barrels of Manzanilla that are directly tapped for the sherry, and an old, no-nonsense, heavily accented grumpy Spaniard as the bartender. He really fit the ambiance well. I told him I didn’t know sherry well, but that I wanted something not very dry, but that I don’t like syrupy sweet either. He just said ‘medium’ in English and then without further ado, turned around, poured some Manzanilla from a tap, took a dark bottle of cream sherry, mixed some of it in, swirled it, and served without saying another word. He did a good job, and it was exactly what I was hoping for.
At this point, from conversations I either had or had that I had overheard, I started to realize that the vosotros verb conjugation does slow down my understanding, as I have to pause to process it, and in that time while my mind is thinking about the verb form, I miss the end of the sentence. I get lost here with it especially because 1. I’m not used to it, and then 2. because the final -s is left off, making it a bit harder for me to recognize the tense (and vosotros isn’t said, just the verb, so my mind didn’t have that pre warning of what is coming). On the next 3 days of the trip, I was more aware of this and it helped.
I spoke with our hotel desk in Cadiz for a bit, and also talked to some Dutch tourists I met in Sevilla who were living in Malaga for the past 20 years (but visiting Sevilla since some of their old friends from the Netherlands were visiting). They talked about their communities and clubs along the costa del sol, and that for instance the Dutch people live in a Dutch area, and speak largely Dutch or English. However, their daughter, who is 18 years old, grew up in the area and went through Spanish schooling, so she feels more comfortable in Spanish than Dutch. In Cadiz, there were international clubs. It seems that along the costa del sol, there are a lot of expatriate pockets where even the grocery store, and certain clubs or social meet ups could be in different languages (English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian) for the retirement community that lives there.
After our day in Cadiz, we went to Ronda, which is an old “white hills” city, where the old town was a Muslim fortification, connected to another hill by the “new bridge” (which is now 3-4 centuries old) which is a giant, beautiful stone bridge overlaying the gorge. It was mobbed with tourists that came on buses during the day, but in the evening it got quieter, and was lovely. We stayed the night there. It made me want to read “For whom the Bells Toll”. Hemingway spent a lot of time in Ronda, and the bridge in the book is based off of the one in Ronda I hear. I like “The Old Man and the Sea” and “A Farewell to Arms”, so I should pick up “For whom the Bells Toll” someday.
After a day in Ronday, we then stopped for 3 nights in Granada, which had the friendliest people I had yet to meet. In several stores, at the bus station, the hotel, restaurants, people seemed not rushed, and genuinely friendly and occasionally wanted to have a bit longer conversation outside of the generic, essential language for travel/tourism/consumerism… which is not fun or exciting foreign language use. We had a free tour (paid in tips) that was fantastic of the old Albayzín neighborhood and beyond that, the large hill overlooking Grenada with an assortment of people living in these cave homes, without electricity or running water to them. People had been living in these hills since the Christian monarchs took the city over in 1492. Many outcasts were forced to live outside the city gates, and moved out there, which included people hiding from forced conversion, African slaves who were freed, but excluded from society, and anyone socially ostracized. Later, Roma came into Spain and some settled here, and mixed in and people in this community made flamenco music, shows, and dancing part of what it is. Washington Irving was fascinated with Granada, actually lived in the Alhambra (where there were a lot of ‘squatters’ living at that time as well), and wrote a book on it, which really helped put Grenada on the Romantics European tourist map. He met many of the (honestly, mixed race) Roma called gitanos (or gypsies in English, but due to the derogatory offense taken by the word, I prefer to not use it here). They put on shows, told stories, and became an essential part of the tourist industry and culture in Grenada, and they would preform in their cave homes as flamenco ‘clubs’ called peñas. In the 1960’s, a landslide occurred and killed 2 people living in these hill caves, and the government used that as an excuse to evict all the people who had been living in these hills. Later, after the dictatorship ended, a few people started to move back into some of the caves, and in the 2000’s there can be legal status obtained to live on these properties. Some of the people are descendants from the original people who had lived in the caves, but according to our guide (who lived in Grenada his whole life, studies art history, and had a long term girlfriend who was a descendant of people who did live there, and she lived for sometime in a cave home) a lot of the people who now come to live in the cave homes on the hills are bohemian types from all over Europe, who form small communities.
That first night in Grenada, I got recommendations for Moroccan food, and had a delicious babaganoush and a meatball-vegetable Tajine with tea. The owner came out at about 9:45 or 10 PM, spoke briefly with all the customers at the tables (was very polite and friendly), then sat down with his 3 daughters for dinner at a reserved table in part of the restaurant. It was nice to see the owner and his family enjoying a meal together there in the restaurant with us!
Day 2 in Grenada we had a booked tour of the Alhambra, which I loved for the history, but it was in English, we enjoyed shopping and had a nice slow day, day 3 we spent the morning in Grenada, had a coffee, relaxed, then via RENFE took the “train” (in quotes because even though it was a train, it was really 2 buses then a train) to get back to Sevilla. It is our bad luck and poor planning, but the Copa del Rey final was on this day, so staying in the city was extremely expensive, so we stayed far outside the center in a place we could afford in the outskirts (about 45 minute bus ride to the city center). During the day we went to the city center, the city was full of fans wearing Barcelona and Valencia shirts, drinking, carrying on and parading with flags and chanting. Police were out in full force, and with the elections the following day, some of the chants and comments were political in nature, and the police came in and pulled several people out of a terrace by where we were having a meal. I had no idea what they were in trouble for, all the were doing was occasionally chanting, but nothing that I noticed that I thought was against the law. In the end the police decided so too and let them go, but held them there for about 20 minutes. Before the game started we headed back to our suburb, went to a neighborhood bar to watch the match, which was moderately busy that night. They definitely don’t typically get tourists. I had a few beers and watched the game, then after about 10 PM, a parade of children of different ages came through to the back, where they had a birthday party dinner for a girl who got a guitar as a gift. I’m still shocked by how late people stay up and how late they eat meals… its definitely not good for people with GERD to eat that close to bedtime.
During this month, I read La Sombra del Viento (see the bookclub post for more of my thoughts on this). I last read it 8-9 years ago, and enjoyed it just as much on the second reading, but never got around to read the other 2 in his ‘cemetery of forgotten books’ series. I also finished reading a mystery book I started earlier in the year in Russian by Boris Akunin in his Fandorin series (I had read an abridged version of book 1 for foreigners, read book 2, and this is book 4… I’m not a super fan of them, but for some reason I’ve picked up book 2, book 4, and another one which is one of the last ones if not the last one he wrote in the series (I believe) and haven’t read.. definitely not essential to read them in any particular order).
May HoursSpanish: 29 hours, 40 minutes
Japanese: 10 hours, 40 minutes
Russian: 6 hours, 35 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 30 minutes
Dutch: 2 hours, 30 minutes (I did more Dutch because I packed my Teach Yourself Dutch on vacation, and would do 10-15 minutes here and there on buses. No particular reason, I just felt like doing a bit more Dutch this month).
French: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 5 minutes
German: 45 minutes
Polish: 40 minutes
Bengali: 30 minutes (should have done more, but I had been busy, and studying off of an old internet site is not convenient so it’s hard for me to think to do it and keep motivation. I should buy a more formal paper course soon if I want to take Bengali seriously)
Portuguese: 15 minutes
Running 2019 total:Spanish: 59 hours, 30 minutes
Japanese: 56 hours, 10 minutes
Mandarin: 39 hours, 0 minutes
Russian: 37 hours, 10 minutes
French: 12 hours, 35 minutes
Italian: 5 hours, 40 minutes
German: 5 hours, 30 minutes
Portuguese: 5 hour, 15 minutes
Dutch: 4 hours, 15 minutes
Bengali: 4 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 2 hours, 30 minutes