Granadan Life

It's very hard to be vegetarian in Spain. Today, I reached an all time low for food in Spain: barely cooked beans, lettuce and tomato for lunch (though the patatas alioli helped beforehand) and bread and curado cheese. But I did have some interesting sweets during the day: arroz con leche gelato and later, a rosco, a speciality of Cadiz for Semana Santa. But, come to think of it, I'm not really sure what I ate during Semana Santa itself.

I experienced my first Semana Santa, Easter celebrations in (southern) Spain, and it was all just a blur. This was mostly due to my extremely erratic sleep cycle: the first night in Granada was one of the most famous procesiónes of Semana Santa, La Procesión de la Gitanos. So essentially, every night during the week, Catholic brotherhoods or orders wear costumes, much like those worn by the Ku Klux Klan, and parade around town with the idols of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary (for my Telugu readers: Yesu Cristu ooregimpu). These are large figures on ornate platforms that are carried on the backs of about twenty four men (again for Telugu readers: pallakilaga) and guided through the streets by the people in the march. Anyway, so after the weekly CS Granada meeting, we headed over to see the start of the procesión. It started at around 12:30AM and lasted until 7:30AM, until the statue of Mother Mary was finally behind the gates of the Abbey of Sacromonte, a very famous monastery just outside of Granada. There are a few reasons why the procesión took so long. The first and primarily because the people carrying the pallaki had to take baby steps to move. It took about one minute to move one meter, if that. And they switched groups of men very half an hour or so. Secondly, because the abbey is up on a hill, SacreMONTE. Lastly, because they stopped every so often when someone sang a song or prayer. By the time Mother Mary went in, Adele, the Spanish aunty I met at the CS meeting, Serendipiti, the American study abroad student, and I were totally totally tired: from walking, standing, and lack of sleep. I went back to my room and crashed for the day.

The next day was pretty mellow. I thought I was going to have an exciting night out, but I met Rolando who suggested that I sleep early (around 8 or 9PM) and get up around 2AM to see the procesión silencio (silen because Jesus died on Friday), and then wait on line at Alhambra starting at 5AM. So, this is exactly what I did. And after waiting three hours on line to see one of the most visited sites in Spain, I was sorely disappointed. Here I was expecting the Moorish palace to be an exciting melange of religions and cultures, but really, it was simply shoddy, well, more like early, Muslim architecture. It sorely lacked symmetry, was not very big at all, and was overall kind of boring. Especially after seeing the wonders of Muslim architecture in India like the Taj Mahal and the surrounding palaces, Alhambra was really almost amateur. The only reason why I (and the others) stayed was because we went together as four couchsurfers traveling through Granada: Rolando from Costa Rica, Szidonia from Transylvania, Alex from Czech Republic (though I think he's Russian), and me from New York. I'm not going to lie, I didn't think we would get along at first, but either the disappointment of the Alhambra, the general time we spent together or the shitty windy, wet weather...or something, brought us together.

After the Alhambra, we were so tired that we went back to our hostals/hosts and slept for the rest of the day. And of course, because we slept during the day, we stayed up all night. Granted, it was a great night - I saw a fabulous drag show (in Spanish) and later, a real flamenco singer. The next morning, I took the 8:15 train to Sevilla and then another train to Cadiz to get to Rota, all on no sleep, as per usual. This is why my facebook status was: "Just as a heads up for those who will or want to visit Granada: don't expect to sleep much, especially between the hours of 12am and 8am."

¡Be ye warned!

Rollercoaster Ride

Couchsurfing is really like a rollercoaster ride. It really is.

I arrived to Granada this morning from Barcelona with absolutely no idea where I'll stay for the next three days. I finally got to an internet cafe after two hours of walking around and finding everything closed. As an aside, I´m not really a hardworker nor do I focus my energies on productivity. All the people close to me (my four family members, Neil, Ava, Nasim, etc.), they're all hard workers, but me, not so much. But even I was surprised at the Spanish work ethic! It was already 10AM and most stores still weren't open. I figured that if they opened at 11 and closed again at 2pm for siesta and re-opened in the evening from 5-8pm, they only work six hours a day...max!

Anyway, it's unfortunate that Granada had be my first real couchsurfing downfall. (I couldn't find a couch in Inverness, but it was only one night and it's wasn't terrible). After four successful and successive weeks of only couchsurfing (with Bologna being the exception - I stayed at my sister's friend's place), I simply could not find a couch in Granada. Nor could I find one in Sevilla, my next stop. I'm checking into a hostel later today. Kinda disappointed about that. I also decided this morning that I'm not going to Sevilla, but to Rota, a small town by Cadiz, on the Atlantic.

The thing about couchsurfing is that it really is a much better way to travel. For example, I made some awesome friends in Italy who were as hospitalable as family would be. Fabio, who cooked for me, gave up his room for me, took me partying and to his classes, in Padova and Matteo, who took me around Rome and explained all the history, cooked for me (too!), and drove me around, in Roma. My time is Barcelona was so wonderful that I'm thinking of even living there for a year or two. Kamil, my host, essentially said it's when I move to Barcelona (not if). Kamil and Paulina were such wonderful hosts and even better friends. So even if the city has nothing to offer, like Padova (or Birmingham), you can still have a great time.

It's totally bittersweet because you leave the city after a few days but you become good friends with your hosts. You're not really sure when you'll see them again. It's different with my friends from New York because I know I'll see them in eight months but...when will I go to Italy or Spain again?! And the downside is that if you're entirely dependent on couchsurfing like me and don't really know any other way to travel, it can kind of leave you flat faced when you don't have a couch. I suppose even if you do check into a hostel, you can still attend the couchsurfing events in the city or find fellow travelers, but it's not totally the same.

Oh CS. I'll definitely miss it when I spend the summer in Vizag...the community doesn't seem to be too big there. I definitely can't wait to go back to New York and start hosting people!

Toulouse, for some reason, reminds me of India...

It was very weird. I was in Toulouse for about two days (and three nights) and so much of the city reminded me of India: the gullies that were just large enough to let cars pass through, the open air staircases in apartment buildings, and so much more (i.e. I can't think of anything else for the moment, but take my word for it). But I'll be honest, from the beginning, Toulouse was a little difficult for me. I wasn't until the last few hours did I really get to enjoy it. I came to Toulouse purely on whim, like all the other cities I'm visiting. A classmate in my public space class mentioned that Toulouse was amazing in an offhand remark during class once and it stuck with me. So, I decided to see what was so awesome about it. I spent the day in the train from Strasbourg to Toulouse. I had lunch in Paris with Srilekha; Pavan & Harsha during my two hour stop over. The ride was really a tour de France: from Strasbourg to Paris to Toulouse on a train that went through Bordeaux. It was about a quarter to seven in the evening by the time I got to Toulouse. Then I realised that I didn't have the notebook where I noted my host's address. After fruitlessly trying to find an internet café, I phoned my friend Megan in London with my dying phone and asked her to get the details from my couchsurfing account. I suppose it was the difficulty of finding a couch in Toulouse that made the stay difficult to begin with: I sent out a lot of requests and got very few responses. Eventually, I did find someone, let's call him T, to host me for the last two nights in Toulouse, but the first night, Sunday night, was still couchless. Luckily, I got a few responses from the last minute request group and decided to stay with Stéphane for the one night. All was well - or so I thought. So I call Stéphane on my dying phone and he was sweet enough to come to the train station and pick me up. Stéphane's English wasn't very good at all, so I really got to practice my French. We got to his place, an awesome one bedroom apartment in the attic of a three story walk up, and went to a bar afterwards. After sleeping in the morning, Stéphane and I walked around the city and he showed me the sights. I was thoroughly shocked to see a peacock in Toulouse! I've only seen them once, in Delhi, but never elsewhere. We walked along the Garonne, the main river of Toulouse, the Capitole, and past the Arc-de-Triomphe equivalent of the city. It rained off and on and that was definitely a bummer because I totally didn't expect rain in any of the cities I planned to visit. A few hours later, Stéphane left me and I started to see the city on my own. I explored the southside of the Garonne. This part of Toulouse is a lot smaller and perhaps not as...fancy as the center city. I did find a used book market...unfortunately they were all in French. And then I realised that Toulouse does really have a lot of bookstores that are specialised and locally owned. It's a pleasant change from New York where bookstores are closing because of corporate giants like B&N. They had bookstores for just dance and music, history, literature - you name it! Anyway, it really started to pour in the afternoon and I got on the tram kinda randomly. I thought it would go to the city center, but it ended up going to the northern suburbs. After more wandering around, I got back to Stéphane's place and planned to shift to T's place. Incidentally, he only lived a few blocks away. But when I got there, no one answered the door or picked up the phone! Needless to say, I was pissed. I even tried calling him a few times. No success. So I killed some time in the internet café waiting for his call. Then at an Indian restaurant, Ganapathy, owned by a Tamil Sri Lankan. It felt so good to eat annam pappu again! And the waiter even recognised that I'm South Indian and brought out some achar! By the end of the meal, T still hadn't called, so I called up Stéphane and politely asked to stay at his place one more night. He was totally nice about it and let me, but it was still kinda awkward considering we said goodbye and all earlier in the evening. He told me that he wasn't staying at his place the following night, so I really had to find another host. Enter Javier. Javier offered to host me when I asked for an emergency couch but since Stéphane already offered, I politely declined. But I asked him after I got Stéphane's place and he was totally cool with it. So, the next morning, my mind cleared of couch worries, I left Stéphane's place super early (because he had to leave for work) and wandered around Toulouse. It didn't rain either! I found a small street with tons of great graffiti, walked by the St. Sernin Elgise, and had coffee at a crappy café. One of the things I really like about traveling is that I started reading...a lot. Because there's only so much walking and sightseeing and wandering you can do in a day before your feet give. So I made significant headway into Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Although I agree with most of his ideas, there were some faults with the presentation that I couldn't reconcile. After reading quite a bit, I met up with Javier at a metro station and he took me to his place to leave my stuff. Javier is from El Salvador and is doing a Masters in International Business in Toulouse. He is extremely very traveled and very laid back. When we got to his place, he made me arepas for lunch! I was so happy - I've always wanted to try some. After lunch, I headed back in the city and wandered around a bit more until Javier would be free in the evening. It was sunny for the rest of the day and I got to see a lot more of the city. During my wanderings, I saw two entreprising old Roma men making candle holders out of used soda and beer cans. It was brilliant! I bought three just to support them and later realised that I can give them to my next host as a gift. We tried talking, but the Roma men didn't seem to know much French or didn't understand me. But they did ask if I spoke Hindi or if I'm from Punjab. It was really cool interacting with them. I then remembered one of my goals for Europe: learning more and interacting with the Roma people. They are, after all, the oldest part of Indian diaspora and no matter what my advisor says, I still think diaspora studies are very interesting. I met up with Javier at his university and had a cheap lunch there. There I met his classmate whose name I simply cannot remember. She was an extremely sweet Chinese girl who did not want to speak French at all. We talked about Chinese people, Toulouse, summer work/internship plans and more. Javier then took me to the language café, a weekly meeting of people who want to practice different languages. I took this opportunity to practise my Spanish and see how good it is. To my disappointment, I could barely speak it. But the people at the table were very nice and understanding of this. My head started to hurt after about an hour of speaking Spanish, so Javier and I headed down to the weekly couchsurfing meeting at Café Flute. I met a lot of cool people there - including Laura, who was quite drunk by the time we got there. She was some zoologist or something at the university. But the really cool thing was (excluding the fact that she was a lot of fun) that she was wearing a Navdanya t-shirt! I was so so so excited and surprised to this. I asked if she met Vandana Shiva and more about her experience with the organisation. I honestly would apply for an internship with Navdanya for the summer if it was located in a Telugu speaking region of India. Anyway, after the meeting kinda dispersed, Javier and everyone went to a salsa bar across the street. I was such a pleasant change of scenary to finally see a lot of people of colour in France! All of us danced the night away and then Javier and I walked back to his place. And even though it was raining, I still had an excellent time just because Javier showed me a lot of fun things to do. The next morning, I woke up six minutes after my train to Nice had left.