Spanish Steps - Part 3: Malaga to Madrid - The Road Back Home and Away
You see the picture above? It's the only picture I took in Malaga.
It's a fake lighthouse built 15 years ago. That pretty much sums up the Malaga cultural experience.
I had heard that the beach in Malaga was one of the best of the Spanish beach resorts, so Chris and I had come here for a relaxing couple of days to chill. However, when we walked down to the water's edge it was covered by billions of ancient cigarette ends and the sand was almost black. It was like sitting in a huge ashtray. Surely we must have gone to the wrong beach?
Dotted around were what looked like burnt offerings - charred human sacrifices to the great sun god Ra. This motley bunch of radiation addicts looked like Thanksgiving Turkeys after a Californian forest fire; sun worshippers with scorched, skinny limbs stretched out in all possible angles to capture every last drop of that UV goodness. It made me feel slightly nauseous.
Ten years ago, there had been a lot of debate in the African American community about how pale skin could give black people more status, probably sparked by Michael Jackson's skin "disease". So while black Americans were aspiring to a paler complexion, the pale skins were down on the beach trying to turn dark. It seems that sometimes the grass is always blacker or whiter.
After the beach trip, it started to drizzle and the rain never really cleared for the rest of our time in Malaga. Chris and I entertained ourselves by having political debates - Chris is very astute and knowledgeable about politics - or by creating mindless general knowledge questions usually revolving around music and film. He would often wind me up by asking a multi-faceted question with about ten answers, then begin to count down ominously, “5 - 4 – 3 – 2 – 1” while I struggled for a single answer.
My favourite evening in Malaga was quite bizarre. As a lover of the American sitcom Cheers, I had discovered that a local bar had recreated the set from the series to attract tourists. When we got there it was as cheesy as you can imagine, but incredibly the plaza it stood on was directly opposite Malaga Cathedral, providing a wonderful vista as we listened to a guitarist and female singer cover jazz standards. Nice!
At the end of this last weekend in Europe, Chris left for home. He was a great travel companion - very easy going and amiable - and as we've been friends for fourteen years, we knew there wouldn't be any major problems between us. However, I am surprised by the fact that we didn't have a single argument. Not one. I expected at least a dozen since we’re both opinionated bastards!
Now I was on my own, I had a decision to make. Go to Madrid, or head back to my favourite Spanish town for a couple of days. The decision was easy.
I headed to Granada and the comfort of the Casa Martin Apartments. In the evening I returned to the Hamelin Cerveceria for another night of mayhem with my new found Spanish chums.
Myself, Sammy and Luka.
The following day I wandered around the Albayzin district where my apartment was located.
Some of the buildings here date from the fourteenth century, and the district maintains the original Medieval maze of winding backstreets with ramshackle buildings leaning upon each other, strewn across the hill like fallen masonry. It really is quite beautiful in its ragged disorder, and one spot in particular gives astonishing views of the Alhambra opposite (see Spanish Steps Part 2).
Finally; Madrid for two days. I checked into the hostel late in the evening after a six hour bus journey from Granada and noticed that the hosts had organised a pub crawl that night. There was a group of around thirty of us who attended, but I mainly hung out with Kris and Ellen from Belgium and Michael from Germany.
Kris was a very funny bloke and at six foot eight, not to be messed with. He's the kind of person who could easily survive falling into a lake full of beer by drinking it dry before he drowned. Ellen was also great company and it was her Birthday after midnight, so we had a beer to celebrate. And another one. And another one etc. Michael was a student from Germany, and a doctor in the making. He obviously wasn't taking his own advice; he was drinking the beer before it was poured.
Clockwise from the top – me, Kris, Ellen and Michael.
It was a great, fun night (what little I remember) but the next day I couldn't pull myself out of bed until 3:00pm, so I saw little of Madrid apart from a ten mile hike I pushed myself through to snap out of my hangover.
I returned back to the UK the next day and spent a week visiting my friends and my sisters before the big world-wide trip. Although it was great seeing everyone, there was something missing. Something very dear to me.
My mum was one of the best friends I will ever have, but she died six months ago and now I couldn't talk to her about my experiences. I couldn't show her the world through my eyes as I had seen it through hers as a boy. I couldn't tell her all of the things I had witnessed, smelled, touched, tasted; couldn't share the stories of my antics so we could laugh at my idiocy; couldn't listen to her sage advice on the things that were troubling me. And I never will again.
I miss her every day.
