Granada

Mom, Dad, and anyone else who cares:

You are so lucky that the TEFL program wasn’t set for Granada--I’d never come back!  I was in the city for a grand total of 24 hours, and it’s already risen to one of my Top Five Favorite Places Ever, potentially even top 2--Boston still beating it by a hair because my highest concentration of “family” is still there. High praise, no? The last time I fell in love with a city, I was 12 years old, walking through Haymarket, and saying to myself, “I’m going to live in this city and shop in this market when I grow up.”  So, who knows?  You can’t call yourself the “Renaissance and Baroque City” and not make me want to stay.

The whirlwind tour of Granada began when Lyndsey and I caught the early train on Saturday morning. After rushing around for the first hour we were awake (I opened my eyes at 6 a.m. and Lyndsey had also forgotten to set her alarm, both of us needing to get dressed, pack, and be out the door by 6:30 if we were going to get to the train station in time to purchase tickets for the 7:00 train), I’ve discovered there is no better way to dually wake up and calm down than by taking a train through the Andalusian countryside. Unlike so many of the high-traffic railways of the US (or at least the Boston-New York rail I take so often), I can’t even see the tracks of the train headed in the opposite direction. It’s just field after field, hills rolling on top of each other, as far as the eye can see.

There are three different types of land along this route: there’s the tan field, likely home to something unable to be grown in the scorching July sun; olive trees, deep green and bushy, planted in rows that remind me of the orange groves I’d pass on my drives across Florida; and sunflowers, still very small now, but sure to be much larger by the time they’re harvested and sold in the fall. 

Every so often we’d pass a small town, its whitewashed plaster buildings reflecting the rising sun beautifully. it’s also incredibly different from Sevilla, where each building is a different bright color. Some of these towns just rise and fall in the distance, some are smaller stops for our train. Occasionally in the far distance I’ll see windmills, which (thanks to Lyndsey) remind me of Don Quixote, that quintessential Spanish novel, which makes the entire thing feel more Spanish and makes me feel more authentic--regardless of the fact that the ticket guy didn’t understand me the first time I asked for a ticket this morning.

The subtle rocking of the train lulled me to sleep, and I woke up as we were approaching Granada. We had nothing planned except to see the Alhambra, the ancient palace and fortress of the Moors and the last to fall to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 during the 15th-century Spanish Reconquest. It’s as we’re walking through the city, towards the Alhambra on the other side of town, that I fall in love with the city as I’ve only done once before.

Granada has the build of a city and the pace of a small town, which is either growing on me a) because it’s how they do in Spain, or b) because we woke up early and walked over 10 miles that day and I was just not set to go fast the whole time. Even as Lyndsey and I traipsed around with no set plan, finding church after church and cute little plaza after cute little plaza, the trees were blooming a vivid, seemingly doctored shade of green and the buildings were adorned with such details that I couldn’t believe a place like this existed in the 21st century outside of literature. 

At night, the streets were lit with lights draped over the streets like they are on Harvard Ave. or in Brighton Center, except even larger and more colorful (and, I have to admit, classier shops on the streets themselves, too). We passed a band playing music in one of the plazas while a bunch of people--mostly older couples--danced, and it was so wonderful and incredible and Spanish that it made me beam one of those “I can’t believe this is my life” smiles. Yes, I’m a sap in Spain--deal. 

This was also the night that Spain won the World Cup quarter-finals game against Paraguay, and while the game ended around 10:30 p.m., people were driving through the streets in their cars and on their Vespas, shouting and honking their horns in celebration until well past midnight. The energy in the city was electric--although I can’t really count that as just Granada, as I’m sure it was that way in every part of the country. You all know I’ve never been a soccer person, but it’s hard not to get excited when you’re surrounded by an entire population of Ralf Gawlicks and other such soccer lovers who are spending June and July living for the sport. 

You may have noticed I’ve said virtually nothing of what we did in Granada--well, I’ve got a bunch of pictures of the Alhambra, so check them out if you’d like. But what affected me the most was the manner in which the people and the city just lived--it’s so historical, and yes so right now. Francis Mayes, in her book Under the Tuscan Sun, said it better than I could, even thought she’s writing about southern Italy as opposed to southern Spain:

In these stony old Tuscan towns [or in Granada, as far as I’m concerned], I get no sense of stepping back in time that I’ve had in Yugoslavia, Mexico, or Peru. [Andalusians] are of this time; they simply have the good instinct to bring the past along with them. If our culture says burn your bridges behind you--and it does--theirs says cross and recross.

You can look up the hill and see the Alhambra from any section of the city. The nearly 500 year-old cathedral is visible from the train station. And they have signs, statues, and memorials commemorating this “Rennaisance and Baroque” city at every turn. But as the city comes to life that night, I realize that it’s not just commemorating what was 500 years ago, but also living fully in the here-and-now in a balance that rarely find in the States--one of the few places being where I live. Come to think of it, I just might have found my European Boston in more ways than one.