Granadadada

Just like nothing 3 months had gone by. Three months I have been living in Granada. It took me a while to finally get used to it or actually to adjust to this new country. As weird as it may sound, one of the reasons why I couldn't quite adjust was the language. If you know me, you know that I'm weird so this shouldn't come as a surprise. Nevertheless, it took me about a month to accomplish what it took me more than 6 months in Estonia (even tho is no secret my love for Estonia).

I no longer live in the hostel, which is good. My flatmates are cool. I live with 3 girls. I have a super cool group of friends in which I'm the only native Spanish speaker.

Another interesting fact is that in these three months I had more friends visiting than for an entire year in The Black Hole. And a couple of more are coming in the next few weeks. I guess Spain is more "central" than Estonia.

All in all, life is almost good here. I mean there are a couple of things are not quite alright but I guess I can live with them. At least for the time being.

I wish that 9gag didn't exist. I need to spend less time browsing through all the crap people post there. But it's funny. That, and the fact that for some strange reason I cannot get online at home make very difficult for me to write new stuff. But there has to be a solution no? Maybe I could write a word document and then copy and paste it onto the blog? I could try that. This post won't have pictures in it. I don't know where my memory card reader is.

I went to Nerja again. This time I camped on the beach. There is a hippie beach 5 seconds away from what I think it's  the guiriest beach in Nerja. Just walk around a big rock and you are in Playa Chica. I didn't feel welcome there. I felt a bit of aggression while being there. The same kind I felt when I went to the Dragon festival, a free hippie rave in the nearby town of Santa Fé. I wanted to take shitloads of photos of people but nope, I didn't. I didn't want to get my ass kicked. It was a very interesting festival. I'm not an expert when it comes to festivals but I thought there was going to be a central stage where DJs where going to play their (strange for me) music but no. Anyone could just set up a tent with a sound system and voilá! I was having a lovely time when suddenly a generator was started followed with horrible music. Killed the mood. There was a tent that was playing good music but I only stayed for one night. My parents raised me as a responsible boy, didn't even go out that night. I tried to hitch back to town but no one picked me, bastards. The police were checking for drugs, they were checking people going in and coming out:
- policeman: "where are you going?"
- Ron: "home?"
- policeman: "do you have any illegal drugs on you?"
- Ron: "no. I don't do drugs" (?)
- policeman: "where are you from?", while holding me by the arm
- Ron: "Guatemala"
- policeman: "do you have hash in Guatemala?"
- Ron: "eeer, I don't know". I actually don't know,
- policeman: "and coke?"
- Ron: thought about telling him that we also have Pepsi and a few other colas but decided not to, he seemed that he didn't have a sense of humor. "coke is from Colombia. Besides, coke is everywhere"
- policeman: "alright. good-bye"
- Ron: ?. "ciao"

Spring should here. During the day it's warm and sunny, except when it's raining. The other day it was and I went to the shop wearing shorts and jandals... some people even looked at me angry! It was not that cold, nothing I couldn't bear. I probably looked very guiri.

I think Granada is drunk: warm days and chilly evenings. Oh well, beer and drugs are cheap around here... probably that's the reason.

still roaming around Andalucía

It's been over a month since I wrote something. I had so many friends visiting me that I haven't found the time to write.

One thing that maybe some of you might already know is that Granada is growing on me and it's doing it fast! The moment that I immediately started to really like it here was one sunny saturday afternoon a few weeks ago. I was cooking in the hostel when my friends Marie and Felix showed up. The weather was superb, they literally dragged me out to catch some sun in one of the many parks in Albayzín. There we met with other people and in the end we were a small group of about 8 people drinking, chatting and listening to music. From that moment onwards I started to really, really like Granada.

I had a few days off in a row and my friend was flying into Málaga so I decided to go. Málaga is a nice city, not sure if I would go back, maybe yes, but it was nice. Weather was awesome, it was more than awesome! Tshirt weather. There is some kind of fortress on top a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, going up there was not fun at all but the views from up there made all worth it.

After sending a few unsuccessful CS requests we decided to drink the night away, going from pub to pub until well, a new would arrive. Probably this plan would've worked out on the weekend but it didn't work on a monday. Málaga doesn't have as many chinos (Asian owned open till late convenient stores) as Granada. To find one it took us about an hour but we found it and bought the precious wine to celebrate Justyna's graduation. We drank it by the boardwalk. Then we started our plan: first pub told us they close at 23:00, we only had time for one beer. We found another one, the bartender told us that he was going to close at 3:00. It was 2:00 when he kicked us out alleging that his boss called and told him to close due to the lack of patrons... we were the only two customers. The bartender told about a bar that was open until very late so we decided to give it a try. We even took a power nap there! We were kicked out at 4:00. What now? We found an open underground parking garage and decide to go 4 floors below ground level where there were almost no cars parked and was dark. Amazingly I slept quite good, the floor was hard but it wasn't very cold.

Maybe I need to see more of Málaga. Maybe I need to go back. Maybe.. it was a good decision to go to Nerja. It took me several days to finally be able to say the same correctly but I finally stopped calling Renja.

Without a place to stay we explored the town, which is a guiri town but still very nice. The last time I saw (didn't even touched) the Mediterranean Sea was when I was in Barcelona in 2010, almost four years ago! Wow, how time flies! After wondering around town I saw someone that reassembled the CS  guy but he wasn't. His name is Aleksi and is from... Estonia! After talking to him for a while he invited us to sleep in his cave. The caves in Nerja, unlike the ones in Granada which are man made, are natural. Perhaps in summer is super cool to sleep in caves but in February when it's pouring outside it's not fun. It was an interesting experience though. Oh! and the cave wasn't his, it was his friends' cave! Aleski just left us there after sharing some boxed wine with him. The cave was very damp and very cold. Around 5 the real tenants of the cave woke up, well two of them, German and Dutch guy (the other two a Latvian and a Czech). They were really friendly.

The idea was to skinny dip in the sea but due to "safety reasons" (the water was super cold!) the idea was abandoned. Tried to hitch back but was impossible, not one single car stopped. Ended up taking the bus back to Granada.

photo by Justyna

photo by Justyna

photo by Justyna

photo by Justyna

I don't know why I wrote Andalucía in English (Andalusia) in the first post of the "roaming" series...