Granada

Originally Granada wasn't on my Spain 'to do' list. but i've met quite a number of people along the way that have raved about it. it was on the way i was headed, so i felt i should check it out.
in Porto i met Amy, Jinse and Sarah who were teaching english here in Granada. Amy told me that she hosts couch surfers all the time and had room for me, and said that i was more than welcome to stay with them when i got there. if you don't know what couch surfing is, basically its like an online community for travellers. you set up a profile about yourself, you email people the town you want to stay in and if they have room you can stay on there couch free of charge. i feel a bit funny about it myself. even though i think its quite safe, (they have a few things in place to make sure the people are who they say they are and previous guests can comment on there experience) i think i would prefer to host someone rather than stay at someones place, mainly because i'm on my own and i feel a bit uncomfortable about dropping into someones place that i don't know. what if you get stuck with some one thats a bit strange? but i think this time it was a bit different because i knew the people beforehand.

the bus ride was quite a good one. i fell asleep only to be wake myself up by drooling all over myself. charming, i know. but when i did wake up and looked out the window i noticed i was passing through, what seemed to be miles and miles of olive farms. apparently Olives are one of this regions biggest exports. after a few hours i finally made it to Granada and met up with Amy, dropped my backpack off and got into exploring the town. well, kind of, just when i was about to throw my thermals into the bin (and set it alight, i might add) the heavens openned. pretty much the whole time i was here it rained cats and dogs (just in case the RSPCA are reading, not literally) but occationaly the sun did come out and i made the most of it.

before i got here i heard he Granada had a bit of a Moroccan feel to it. i haven't been to Morocco but from what i imagine it would be like, i can see what there on about - especially in the old town, with its sandy coloured buildings, lots of arches, patterns and pebble roads. Pebble roads aren't just in Granada, i've noticed them throughout Spain and also Portugal, they have some great patterns through them. but because they're uneven i think i trip at least twice a day! probably the most obvious moroccan influence is Granada's main sight, its called the Alhumbra and is an old muslim palace. its a bit of a nightmare to get into it, there are only limited tickets solded per day, and because its really popular i had to line up at 7:30am to get tickets for the afternoon, not much fun, but it was worth it. the i have never seen a palace with so much detail, it was amazing, i probably say 'amazing' a little too much but it actually was. the gardens were brilliant too. full of manicured gardens, fountains, etc i think i spent a few hours just wandering around them.
i was kind of expecting to see lots of hippies and for Granada to be older, perhaps smaller and a bit cosier, and there are aspects of that, but i think generally its quite modern. i probably only thought that because during the 70's Granada was teaming with hippies. supposedly you get taxed by the size of your house or something like that (sounds similar to Amsterdam, click here to see the Amsterdam post) so what the hippies did was live in caves up in the hills so the only thing that they were taxed for was the front door. if you go for a wander up into the hills (probably a half hour walk) they're still up there! of course where theres hippies theres smoke and where theres smoke theres pot. i was surprised to hear that hash is legal here in spain. well, when i say legal i mean that its illegal to sell it but not illegal to have it on you, most police turn a blind eye. having said that i wouldn't smoke a spliff right in front of a cop.
there is a big student community here in Granada some thing like 100,000 students go to the university here. which i think is a good thing for a city, generally you find better shops and more interesting things to do while you in a city full of students.

a good thing about staying with people that live here is they take you to all the cool places around town. in Granada when you order a beer or wine they give you free tapas. did i hear someone say 'bottoms up'? when it comes to the tapas, sometimes its you get what your given, but the places we went to you were able to choose what you wanted. it was so good, after a few drinks you've pretty much got dinner sorted.
apart from eating tapas i didn't really try anything new food wise. unless you count Chupa Chups. thats right, Chupa Chups are spanish. i was surprised to hear that after all this time i was pronoucing the name all wrong, its actually pronounced Choopa Choops. I think Chupa means 'suck' in Spanish. hears another useless peice of information for you, the Chupa Chup logo was designed by surrealist painter, Salvador Dali.

of course i didn't eat out the whole time i was here. because i was staying free of charge i felt a bit guilty so i decided to cook dinner for the house. i just cooked pasta because it was quite easy to make, everybody seemed pretty happy with it. something interesting Amy told me was when they sit down to eat they don't start there meal without having bread on the table. i don't normally eat bread with dinner, not sure why, just haven't grown up in the habit of eating it with dinner. anyway, Amy was saying when she first moved in she would start eating her meal without bread and they would look at her funny, as if to say 'wheres your bread, you weirdo?' i was staying with Amy, who is American, but here house mates are from spain so it gave me a good chance to chat to some Spaniards even though Amy had to translate most of the time. her house mates were quite nice, David (pronounced Dar-vid) tried to teach me a few words here and there, but i'm pretty hopeless and didn't retain much. he was telling me that people in Granada, and in the region, are really lazy with the language and generally shorten or don't pronouce the whole word, which must make it tricky if you wanted to learn the language here. something else i really like about the language is, when you ask a question they use an upside down question mark to begin the question, and a normal question mark to finish it ie: ¿ are you not wearing any pants again? it's awesome isn't it? sorry... ¿ it's awesome isn't it? Amy's other housemate Miriam played guitar and taught me some flamenco chords, which are kind of strange, but on the other hand kind of use similar shapes to normal chords, except there on different strings. she told me i was a fast learner, so i'm looking forward to exploring them further.

speaking of Flamenco we went and saw some while i was here. when we were out one night we stumbled across some, which i thought was pretty good, but they told me that i should wait until i saw the real thing. the concert was quite good, i thought the guitarist was brilliant. Jinse was telling me that the musicians play to the dancers rather than the other way around, which i thought was interesting. the dancers dance with so many sharp movements and it was so passionate, but at the same time it seemed like they had the ego of Mick Jagger, but so did the singers. at times i found the singers a bit painful to listen to, it sounded like they. i was going to show them a thing or two about dancing but i don't think spain is quite ready for 'the robot'. anyway, i suppose its not really surprising that there dancing is so passionate. people here in general are quite passionate, even the way they pronounce the language. it sometimes seems that even talking about the weather is an important subject.

come to think of it most nights i was here we went out. if we weren't out eating tapas we were having dinner at someones house, or watching some DVD's. one night they took me to a house party, which was great - i love a good house party! some how i ended up being DJ for half the night. I ripped out a few different tracks from various Australian groups as well as a few others, which seemed to go down quite well with the crowd. the guy whose party it was, told me i could DJ anytime. by the way, i've put my finger on why they have siestas here in Spain. everybody here eats dinner really late (roughly around 10pm, which i can kind of understand at the moment, the sun sets at around 9.30pm) and most of the time don't come back from partying until the wee hours of the morning. after a few days here i was really getting into having a nap of an afternoon.

something i noticed here in Granada, was how slow everyone walks. its such a nightmare walking on the foot paths because you get stuck behind dordlers all the time. and when you try to over take they just seem to get in your way, worst of all, they are totally oblivious to whats happening around them!
they must do everything slow here, i noticed was they've only just released the movie 'Control' at the cinemas. i'm pretty sure i saw that at the cinemas over a year ago. if you haven't seen 'Control' its a brilliant Anton Corbijn film about the tragic life and untimely death of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division. shot beautifully in black and white, you don't really need to be a fan of Joy Division to enjoy it, i fully recommend it.

i've really enjoy my time here hanging out with everyone, and in a lot of ways, it was really hard to leave Granada. i found them all really interesting to chat to and to hang out with. for instance, Sarah was telling me about a french website that gets various music artists from around the world to do acoustic versions of there songs in all sorts of strange places, ie: supermarkets, trams, etc. its a really great website, and a great way to find new music. click here to check out some of the videos. anyway, i just want to send out a big thank you to everyone i met in Granada, Amy and her house mates in particular for letting me stay. next stop Valencia.