Almeria Calling

Beunas dias (it’s Spanish for “Hey good lookin’!” or something)

Yes, Gardy’s Excellent Blog makes an unexpected and yet hugely anticipated return after quite a hiatus (is that Spanish too?). This fun-packed edition comes to you from the Andalucian city of Almeria where I’m being hosted by Álvaro Sicilia-Camacho, a Spanish academic and all-round good egg I met in Leeds in 2006. It’s my second time here and the Spanish hospitality is once again working its magic. More of this later.

First to air travel. There will be those amongst you who have heard quite enough of my fear of flying stories so I’ll just say that most of my trips begin with some near death, or at least near disaster experience such as loss of passport minutes before take-off. With time to kill in Brisbane I cruised the travel knick-knack shop and realised that there was something I actually needed; one of those colourful thingmibobs you tie to your non-descript K-Mart suitcase in order to identify the bloody thing should you cheat death (once more!) and arrive at your destination. Anyway, I found these kids luggage labels in the shape of various beasties.

Having settled on the green pig over the blue giraffe (see piccie) it suddenly struck me that I needed a European power adaptor for Spain. So I opened my suitcase to check whether the American one I packed was going to the do the trick. It wasn’t, so I picked up my bags and headed in the direction of the adaptor stand only for the entire contents of said suitcase – undies, dental floss, slightly embarrassing personal creams, the lot – to scatter across half the floor space of the shop. Lesser travelers would have rolled their eyes, screamed ‘The pig made me do it!” and cursed this shocking start to proceedings. Not I. Nonchalantly I scooped up the sky blue and red Rios, content in the knowledge that ones customary travel blooper was now safely behind one.

Traveling from Brisbane instead of Sydney to Singapore means that you get the old 747s. I can remember being amazed by the size and ambience of the gracious interior the first time I got on one. Compared to the A380 though, which you get from Singers to London, they now feel like being trapped in a clapped-out 120Y, even more so given that five minutes before being shepherded aboard they announced the 747’s in-flight entertainment system was out of service! Meu Deus! Only fellow nervous flyers will fully appreciate what a set-back this is. QANTAS kindly said that they were going to print off $30 book and magazine vouchers (this, apparently, would take no time since the vouchers were currently being printed on a photocopier in an office somewhere in inner-eastern Sydney), distribute them, and then give people time to go fossicking in the book-shops before re-herding the cats onto the plane. Let’s just say that the moment called for some impromptu and seriously positive self-talk (“pull yourself together”, “worse things happen at sea” etc etc). I determined not to allow QANTAS to buy-off my outrage, refused the voucher offer and chose to face the rest of the journey with the stoicism for which Gardy’s Excellent Blog is justly famous.

Singers-London: I can offer no greater praise for the A380 than to report that (as well as not catching on fire) it’s so comfortable I slept for something like 6 hours on the London leg. This is unprecendented although admittedly kicked along by my new knockout pills. The amazing thing about the A380 is that, to begin with, it hardly feels like it’s going fast enough to get off the ground. And then, even for a nervous Nelly like me, if you close your eyes and put on a bit of Metallica you can almost forget you’re on a plane. I liken it more to one long elevator trip except with food and grog thrown in. Naturally I took full toll of the in-flight entertainment, during the time I was compos anyway.

Two days in London followed. My somewhat last minute accommodation arrangements landed me, without a shadow of doubt, in the world’s smallest hotel room. In fact, ‘hotel room’ is a massive exaggeration. Come to think of it, ‘room’ would be an exaggeration. Let’s settle for hotel ‘shelf space’. Imagine you could rent out your sock draw for £55 a night and you’re on the way to feeling my pain.

My digs were in a Bayswater backstreet. Rather nice area actually and Her Maj was good enough to put on a bit of a welcoming party just for me (see video). Very touching. Official engagements out of the way, I ventured out for a bit of church spotting on Friday and Saturday. For various reasons, both these days are not much chop for looking at churches; most are closed and I was only able to get into two.



The first, St James, Spanish Place, is a Roman Catholic church in Paddington (piccie on right). This beauty began life as a chapel in the 18th century but was completed during the 19th. As you can see, the style is early Gothic but was built long, long after Gothic’s heyday. The colour and movement of Gothic was seen, apparently, as a way of bringing the punters back to church.

Second, the amazing St. Bartholomew the Great (below), not to be confused with St. Bartholomew the Lesser round the corner. It’s just near the Barbican and at the end of a tiny lane called, of all things, Little Britain. Partly demolished by Henry VIII, this is one of the last remaining pieces of Middle Ages London. A church was first built here in 1123 and there are some remaining Norman doors, but what’s now left is a mish-mash of destruction and reconstruction. In the centre, though, is a superb, although crowded, medieval space. Needless to say it’s been used in plenty of films including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth.

And so to Spain. My second visit to Almeria has, if anything, outdone the first. I gave a lively and, at times, heated seminar at the university, complete with not one but two translators. The lunch afterwards, though, was the true highlight with Alvaro, his PhD student Miguel and Daniel, the scandalously young Sub-Dean for International Relations with the Faculty of Health Sciences (see pic).

I'll not be able to do justice to my time here so I'll just randomly pluck out a few highlights from the pile. First, the food. Bloody hell the Spanish can eat. Today is Saturday and I'm just back from the beach at Cabo de Gata (Cat Cape apparently, but sounds a bit dodge in English, no?) where a dip in the Mediterranean and a spot of paddle ball was followed by Paella (see piccie) and a tart the size and weight of an average house brick.

Much of my transportation here has been courtesy of the back of Álvaro's motorbike (see video) so there has been some serious character building going on as well as the nosh. Don't get me wrong; Álvaro's a perfectly good driver but the Spanish are a fair bit more devil-may-care about traffic lights, speed bumps and roundabouts, to say the least. All very well except if you are stuck on the back with nothing but a round bit of perspex between you and Almeria's public transport system.

I can also happily report that the beer has been consistently excellent, particularly at my favourite haunt Casa Puga in the city centre (see piccies of main bar, with hams hanging from the ceiling, and my new tapa of choice, consisting of beer, fried egg and ham).

Talking of building character, Álvaro decided we should go on a mountain bike ride one evening. It’s light till about ten here at the moment, so we set off at seven and for the next three hours we battled sand dunes, stray dogs and fading light. I twigged that Álvaro wasn’t totally sure where we were going after one half hour stretch riding over rocks; not stones, pebbles or gravel. Rocks. I will candidly admit that after the first 20 minutes of this, well over an hour into the odyssey, images of a bloke with a white beard, holding a long spear, riding an old horse with his dopy sidekick Sancho bringing up the rear did come to mind. Eventually Álvaro stopped to inform me that this wasn’t part of the plan. Along the way we (that is, I) had lost our only pump and we were miles from being able to turn back, so things were on the edge. The intrepid duo ploughed on and eventually made it home, filthy, just after 10. Of course, this being Spain, we showered and headed out for dinner, tucking into our first cerveza and tapa at Casa Puga around 11. Just another Iberian day.

In the summer, of course, the late night living gets even later. Midnight mid-week sees literally thousands of people with kids and pooches out walking and talking, enjoying the perfect temperature. This week there was a music festival in the square adjacent to the city's cathedral. I went to one of the shows and it wrapped up close to midnight with kiddies and older folk mixing easily. The show included this extraordinary young guy playing a Hebrew drum called the 'hang'. (check him out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I2SjGZOqQg&feature=related). Anyway, being able to be part of a large crowd of people devoid of the yob factor is one the great pros of living in a culture like this.

For most of my time here the university put me up in a little hostel by the beach called Delfin Verde (Green Dolphin). It was small but cheerful and well maintained. It also has its own little restaurant (sorry, food again!) which I looked over from my window. “Gardy! Did you spend much time there?” I hear you ask? Let us just say that by the fifth day the waiters and I were exchanging theories on the meaning of life.

There is much else that I could bore you with concerning cultural difference; the impact of the economic crisis on Spain, beach etiquette, my introduction to the sport of 'padel'. (Did I mention the food?) Anyway, I’ll leave you with an unexpected pleasure. This last video was taken in Madrid airport which, as airports go, is a cracker. Notice the calming silence. You see, as well as being a big, airy space, they don’t do boarding calls or, actually, announcements of any kind. They just expect you to read the screens and get yourself to the plane. Revolutionary, no?

Love yous all

Miguel del Gardo