Spanish Lessons
Warning: Tourist Photos Ahead
Every day for the last 622 days, I’ve spent at least half an hour learning how to speak Spanish using a language app. (You know the one—the green owl.) Even before I started that daily practice, I had a good grounding in Spanish because I studied it in university. That was good because the many convolutions of Spanish verbs were not a complete mystery to me. As our trip to Spain approached, I felt so confident in my Spanish abilities that I thought I would land here and be ready to converse with anyone. That illusion is now shattered.
I can make myself understood. My sentences are adequate and I know I deliver them fairly well because the person I’m talking to understands what I’m saying. But I have a very difficult time understanding what they say in return. I don’t know if Spanish speakers actually talk faster than English speakers. I suspect not, although it feels like their words come out in an enthusiastic rush and seemingly without any punctuation. Even when I ask them to speak slower (por favor, puede hablar más despacio, muchas gracias), it’s still a rhythmic mess of syllables to my ears.
It has been a blow to my linguistic pride to realize just how far from being fluent in Spanish I am. Still I persist. Maybe this will be the day my Spanish ear kicks in, but what usually happens is this. As soon as they realize that I’m impersonating someone who speaks Spanish, the person I’m talking to switches to whatever level of English they have. I reply in my not-so-fluent Spanish and they reply in English again. So we engage in this strange verbal dance where I’m trying to speak their language to them and they’re speaking mine to me. Some days I get so frustrated with myself that I stay silent and leave it all up to Geo, who speaks no Spanish, but has no problem making himself understood. So much communication is achieved through gesture and context.
On our last day in Barcelona, Geo and I went for a long walk after breakfast. It was another blue sky day and I loved feeling the warmth of the sun. We walked at a good pace and soon found ourselves down near the water. I did notice that we were the almost the only people wearing hats to protect our pale faces from the sun. Geo’s is red. I love it. He’s easy to find in a crowd.
The rain came about the same time as our train pulled out of Barcelona Sants station and it rained for most of our four days in Valencia. Geo and I both bought new hats because our Barcelona sun hats were completely inappropriate for wet weather.
Despite the rain, I liked Valencia immediately. I loved the elegance of Madrid, enjoyed the rambling vibe of Barcelona, but felt immediately at ease in Valencia. I could have stayed there a long while. As a city, it’s compact, friendly, and great for walking. No matter where I am, walking is my exercise, my meditation practice, my anti-anxiety medication. Walking is when my body is at its most comfortable and my body liked walking in Valencia very much. I never felt nervous about getting lost. I started to feel so at ease that I wondered why I was anxious about getting lost anyway. Isn’t that one of the reasons for travelling? To get lost and then have to get un-lost? To shake off constraints and explore?
A highlight was our visit to Valencia’s La Lonja, the trade centre built in the late fifteenth century. Standing among the beautiful swirling columns in the huge trade room, I could almost hear merchants from another century shouting bids to one another. Another highlight was spending a few hours wandering the aisles of the Mercado: fish, olives, cheese!
We asked our hotel where we could see some flamenco and they directed us to Cafe del Duende, a fabulous intimate spot where we were close enough to touch the performers (we didn’t). I can still feel the percussion. Hands, feet, fingers, guitar strings, and the resonant singing. Raw emotion.
And then, too soon, it was time to leave Valencia. After two more train rides, we arrived in Málaga, where we rented a car. And suddenly the tenor of our trip changed. We weren’t riding trains or Metros or taking taxis anymore. We were driving. We got lost twice coming out of Málaga. Both times we were soon back on track again, only to become so completely lost trying to find our apartment in Alhaurín that we had to call the property manager to come and guide us to our temporary home.
When I say “we were driving,” I should be clear: I don’t do the driving. Geo does. And the magnificence of his driving skills in unfamiliar locations is astounding. As for me, I do the navigating. And let me be clear once more: my magnificence at navigation is not in the same stratosphere as the magnificence of Geo’s driving. Marital strife ensues.
Refreshed on the morning after our arrival, we decided to visit a traditional pueblo in the hills nearby, for coffee. Why not? We were in Andalucia, it wasn’t raining, and we had a car. We came to explore and there was no reason not to go to a neighbouring town for coffee. The day was sunny, but cool—one of those confusing days that looks inviting until you get outside and realize you should have packed a toque. Never mind, we said. Let’s go to Mijas, we said. MapQuest says it’s not far.
What we didn’t realize is that the road to Mijas starts out narrow and gets narrower. Also, it’s windy (as in, it curves a lot) and on this day, it was also windy (as in, howling gusts of violent air that rocked the car). Geo’s magnificent driving prevailed over my white knuckles and soon we found ourselves in our first white Andalusian pueblo.
Mijas was definitely worth the windy windy road. We arrived in time to see a spontaneous flamenco demonstration in the main square. Despite the cool day, a crowd gathered and we watched until we had to keep moving to stay warm. A shop owner invited us inside his leather goods store. You don’t have to buy anything, he said. Just come in. It smells so nice inside and it’s cold outside, he said. Are you from Canada? We nodded. British Columbia? We laughed. How did he know where we were from, we asked. He laughed and said he wanted to visit Canada someday. Everyone wants to travel. Everyone wants to be somewhere else.
That night, I wrestled with what I should write about this week: my disappointment at realizing my Spanish skills are rudimentary, my fear of plunging into a cavernous foreign ravine, my rampant road anxiety about what drivers other than my magnificent chauffeur might do, or the human need to be someplace else.
Writing is like that. No matter what you’re first words are, they will take you someplace else. You have to start writing to find out where your words are going. That night, I started writing and let my fingers decide where to go and this is what happened. Next time, my writing fingers might tell you about our drive to Ronda! Hint: marital strife ensued, but much magnificence was the reward.
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