It was time to continue my journey south. I sought a means of transport to Montpellier and Pédy showed me the French carpooling website covoiturage.fr. I found a ride with a French guy keen to practise his English who was going to visit his girlfriend in Montpellier. We split the fuel and I paid him €20, roughly half the price of the train. Thus:
Rideshare - Lyon to Montpellier: Win!
Montpellier
I'd sent around eight couchsurfing requests and was invited to stay with a fifty-year-old guy for the weekend. After being surrounded by people around my own age for most of my travels, I thought I'd try something new. It ended up being a fairly quiet weekend. He showed me around the main attractions of the town and we went for a quiet beer on St. Paddy's day.
The highlight of the weekend was meeting up with a saxophonist via couchsurfing and jamming in the park. We were joined by a random trumpeter and made some noise. Good times.
Jamming / The trumpeter, the saxophonist and my host
Sunday morning rolled around and I felt the need to move on. I could have taken a bus, but decided on the more exciting option of hitch-hiking. hitchwiki.org gave me some good tips and a good location to start from, and I was off. It worked like a charm. I was picked up and set down four times, waiting a maximum of ten minutes at any given place. My hosts included: a dentist; a non-English speaking Brazilian monther/daughter who gave me sweets; an English guy in an English car (steering wheel on the right) and a van of environmental activists coming home from a demonstration. Therefore:
Hitch hiking - Montpellier to Barcelona: Win!
Barcelona
I spent all up around ten days in Barcelona. This was very much a different experience to my first visit, when I'd come with Moni over Easter a few years back. Back then I'd only seen the touristic side of the city and become frustrated with the place. This time I was staying with Jorge, an old friend I hadn't seen since high school around fourteen years ago, and his fiancée Anastasia. They welcomed me into their flat where I crashed on the couch. We shared meals and shopping, went out, and explored the city together. Anastasia didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish so it was a week of language exchange for both of us. I actually learned a fair bit of Spanish.
Cityscape / Anastasia (left), friends (middle), Jorge (right)
Also on my list of people to catch up with was Florenci and Pip who'd I'd met on the Sri Lanka trip. They were both living in Sitges, a small nearby coastal town. I managed to catch Florenci in the middle of his busy schedule when he came into Barcelona for a rehearsal/radio interview. I tagged along as their official photographer, and spent the day in a radio station recording studio.
There was a short interview which along with the recordings formed a show for the local cultural channel and aired later on that evening. The show was also put online, here. The music they made was weird, in a good sense. It doesn't really belong to any genre, but if I were trying to categorise it I would say it was a playful form of experimental electro dada. Here's what I mean. :)
Tired and exhausted, we went back to Florenci's place in Sitges for the evening. His flatmate cooked us a wonderful dinner. Croissants on the balcony for breakfast.
Plastic Lego thingies! Reunite! / Breakfast time
I managed to catch up with Pip for a coffee and a chat amidst her also busy schedule and spent a few hours exploring Sitges. Apparently I took a wrong turn and ended up down at the little beach where the nudists play. I parked up safely around the corner and played my guitar in the sun.
Since Jorge and Anastasia studied during the day I tended to have quite a bit of free time. Some of this I managed to spend with other couchsurfers in the area. I met a girl doing her thesis on the perceived image of Barcelona and peoples reasons for travelling there. I went to a language exchange in the park and a night out drinking. Good times all round.
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| Sagrada Familia. Just because. |
Finally it was time to move on. Next stop: Valencia. Since the hitch-hiking had gone so well previously, I opted to try it again. I found the starting point on hitchwiki.org, rose early and set on my way. The result:
Hitch hiking - Barcelona to Valencia: Fail!
Sadly, things didn't quite go as swimmingly as I'd hoped. First, I got on the wrong train. Actually a fairly easy mistake. You see, I was to board the R4 (in the direction of Sant Vicenç de Calders) and get out mid-way. Unbeknownst to me, both the R2 and the R4 had an end destination of Sant Vicenç de Calders, and of course I got on the wrong one. That little mistake cost me around two hours of daylight.
My second problem was slightly more significant. In Spain, nobody stops. One hour after arriving at the gas station I was picked up by a French couple. French, not Spanish. They set me down at another gas station where I was not so lucky. I waited six hours with my thumb out, and caught nothing. It was astonishing. I felt invisible. If someone had space in their car they avoided eye contact and pretended I wasn't there. If their car was full they'd smile and shrug 'Sorry'.
Sun up / Sun set
The police stopped to checked my ID. It felt strange to be considered a public menace. The third time they drove by they waved and I waved back. The sun set and it became dark. I told my couchsurfing host I wasn't going to make it. I took a break and ate a pasta dinner at the autogrill. The trucks started pulling in for the night. One of the drivers said that he was going to sleep now but if I was still there when he woke (at 4:30am) he would give me a ride to Valencia. Nice guy.
Just-in-case hero / Overpass
After six hours waiting another French couple stopped. Thank god for the French. They only could drive me ten kilometres but hell, anywhere was better than here. The driver was a legend. We pulled into the destination gas station and he gets out and walks up to some random guy paying for his gas. He asks if the guy can give me a ride to Valencia. The guy looks me up and down, shrugs and says 'Okay'. I was in awe. The new driver is a professional volleyball player coming back from a meeting with his surgeon in Barcelona, about to have surgery on both his knees to sort out his 'jumper's knee' syndrome. I impart him with my knee surgery stories. He goes out of his way and drops me just off the motorway around forty kilometres out of Valencia. It's midnight. It's the eve of the 29th of March, a general strike across all of Spain. I considered my prospects of hitching another ride to be around nil and just started walking along the road to see what I could find. I found a hotel, drank a beer and checked in. Thirty Euros well spent.
My mission the next morning was to find Sagunto and from there a train to Valencia. I walked for about an hour along the road, over the motorway, through the orange plantations, across the train tracks and into the quiet sunny town of Sagunto. Trains were actually running, just not so frequently. I rolled it into Valencia and made it to my host's place around the same time as he finished work.
Valencia
What great times. I lucked out with my couchsurfing host, a flaminco playing cardiac surgeon who'd just recently started hosting people. He lent me a rusty old bike which (after a little oil) was simply the perfect thing to have for getting around Valencia. I think the coolest thing about Valencia is the big park running through the middle of the town which used to be a river, but in 1958 or so it flooded so badly that they decided to reroute the river around the city and convert the whole thing into a big park. So now there is a pedestrian and cycling highway running straight through the middle of the city. Combined with the number of cycle lanes and the lack of hills, Valencia is the perfect cycling city.
Balcony view
One of the first things I tried to do (as per usual) is to get in contact with the local couchsurfing scene. I was in luck, and what ensued was the most crazy and social time I've had so far on the road. My host finished work and I dragged him along too. Crazy memories include playing volleyball at the beach, guitars in the park after dark, crashing a random birthday party, visiting to local bars and clubs, jamming at 6am after a long night out, riding bikes everywhere.
I had originally planned to stay for two nights, but my host and I got on well and I ended up staying four. I eventually made contact with Rosie, a good friend from NZ who by pure chance was in Malaga on a field trip. I organised a night bus and went to say Hi.
Malaga
You definitely notice the difference in the architecture as you roll into Malaga. The buildings start being white and box-shaped. In hindsight you might say it was more Moroccan. Rosie was staying with some of her fellow students in a cheap little hostel so I joined them. After couchsurfing and staying with people for so long it was nice to have my own time and space. Evenings were spent drinking Bambus/Kalimotxo/Jote with the guitar on the rooftop balcony. We explored the castle on the hill and the beach, but I felt little inclination to do much else. It was a relaxing two days.
Also happening across Spain were the Easter parades. Was quite the eye-opener. No it's not a KKK procession, it's the Pentients paying for their sins. The 'hoods' belong to the Roman Catholic charitable fraternities and often include the notables of the town. There were also parades of purple costumes. The only mild irritation is the huge crowds shuffling slowly through the streets and the late night noise of drums and trumpets.
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| No black people were harmed in the making of this celebration. |
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