brad@anize

Bienvinido Andalusia

Firstly welcome to the Blog. For the curious among you, I did very little work setting this all up. If you look at anize.org, you will see that I’m not the only blogger here. Its a collection of pretty cool guys and the one running it was kind enough to bring me on board, so save any kudos for DFC. Errors are my work ;)

For hopefully the last time, I need to start by figuring out what you know. My last mass eMail, ‘a mad jumble from Granada’ on 05.04, wasn’t sent from my main addressbook but should have reached almost everyone, so I won’t repeat all that here: let me know via eMail if you never saw it and want to. I’m actually going to take a step further back in time to February. Why? Because my previous massmail ended in January and the Canary Islands were simply too good never to mention, especially considering Carsten and I managed to remember most of what happened. On a Thursday I went snowboarding. Saturday night we stood on a beach with 20 degrees C. It didn’t take long and we were on this beach in daylight soaking up some rays. Its Ok Neal - you don’t HAVE to believe it, but the next time you call my mobile and don’t want to believe me, I’m just as likely to be on a beach, even if YOU are at work. We visited Gran-Canaria and Tenerife and played a classic beach hat tournament. Fantastic beach weather, mind-blowing landscapes (it helped that I hardly knew anything about the place beforehand) and a great collection of people, most of my photos are hosted by Buddha

Munich had typical winter after that, with quite a lot of snow. A beergarden weather week (it reached 24degrees) was followed by more snow and that pattern continued until I got too busy to notice or wasn’t there. Busy??? With what? As mentioned in the previous update, I quit my job and was no longer working at BMW. Packing up Munich after over 5 years involved lots of goodbyes, the odd museum I hadn’t seen, cleaning, sorting and handing out to friends. Packing was done in a night and lets forget all the loose ends shall we. This time felt both busy and inefficient since I was trying to savour Munich and the people there during the end-spurt while balancing the chores within that. I think time will mellow it all into a collection of nice memories. One which already stands out was one of the first warm days with Natalie in Schloss Nymphemburg’s gardens, seeing some deer in the wood, talking and soaking up the sun on the grass. The unavoidable going-away party was memorable, which is good, since my camera and 2 fully charged batteries sat forgotten on my desk. Very dumb. NOW it was time to get a flight to Andalusia and a week later I was off and soon writing “a mad jumble from Granada”.

But what’s THE Plan? Are YOU sure you really want to as ME THAT question? Well here goes:
***I won’t work in Germany for at least two years’ after which I can get my pension back instead of waiting till I’m 65. This is very good travel (or otherwise) financing
***THE plan is to develop a long-term plan. This actually means figuring out what to DO and probably WHERE to live and even things like WHO I can spend lots of time with
***Travelling is always a GOOD plan and learning Spanish in Andalusia and maybe Barcelona one of my better ones
***If the plan isn’t better defined by July, it’ll be time to head towards South America

That’s the crux of it. There IS more to it then that, I suppose much of it will be written up on Anize as time allows. A hard-to-write-briefly point is Career. I want to find something where I have more of the feeling that I’m doing something good (Pirsig readers == having more quality) than I’ve had in the past. Not just something that has never been done before, or something fun that rich people will pay for: something that actually means something to me and HELPS others. This tendency (pattern) is slowly taking shape. You may get some ideas what I’m looking at by surfing to designfortheworld.org and its linked sites. Those thinking about their own “lateral drift” or careers, may also want to read the following two links: Finding one’s place - the transformation of employment and The Common Denominator of Success

So that wraps Munich up and takes us into the senses-in-overdrive, suck-it-all-up mode and the mad jumble material arriving in Spain. Two and a half weeks of Spanish course, Easter (Semana Santa) and getting to know a lot of nite-spots in Granada went quickly considering how little was slept. Its time for some free history, geography and tourism information. The basic gist is come here. Spain subdivides into numerous highly varying regions which also have some degree of self-government. Andalusia is basically a chunk out of Spain’s south, bordering Portugal, Gibraltar and the sea. For over 600 years, Arabs ruled parts of Andalusia, their last bastion being Granada which they lost in 1492. After Columbus came back from America, Spain was a colonial power and Seville its most significant city (its Cathedral is the third biggest in the world. I love this claim that the builders said something like “Lets build such a big building, that those who see it will assume we’re mad”). Famous Spanish symbols such as Flamenco, the horses and whitewashed dwellings have their origins here. Anybody not from here, wrinkles their nose at the idea of learning Spanish with the local accent. Bavaria taught me this will not be a problem.

Granada lies at the feet of the Sierra Nevada mountains (3482m), and is stunning in spring time, despite lacking grass to lie or run on (the only thing it lacks). Nightlife entails cheap drinks, free Tapas (with every drink), students, international students, walking uphill, music, dance, Arab tea houses, Flamenco, Salsa and runs late. Its impossible not to have a good time. Flatmates Ari and Jakub and an extended circle of Czechs, Finns and Germans made certain a good time was had and it did get late. I was lucky with the people I met, but unfortunately relatively few Spaniards. 9am classes were too early, but again I was lucky to get a group of good people. I’ve now had more formal schooling in Spanish than German and gone back to my preferred language learning technique of speaking/listening extensively in social settings and occasionally studying at home. The beach is one hour from Granada and its a jolly good one… by all accounts. The coldest spring in 40 years, meant I enjoyed the sunshine elsewhere. I have time. Pictures are better that words for summarising a city, have a look at the first two links on my Spain Photos page.

Eventually it was time to farewell Granada (temporarily at least). After another late night, I went out to the bus station not quite sure where to go to, but trusted my instincts and the tourist brochures I’d seen and went to the Alpujarras, ending up in Capileira during the annual village festival. On the other side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, closer to the sea, this area offers a lot to see and do and I recommend you do it sooner rather than later. I watched an expert paragliding and eagles soaring and am quite sure I don’t belong up there. I prefer to walk. You can taste the food here, its still produced naturally, locally and not sent to market to early. Yum.

I’m now in Seville for May, having arrived to catch the Fiera de Abril, a traditional Folk celebration. Its not right that over 90% of Australians who’ll have heard of the Oktoberfest wouldn’t know anything about Fiera. Bright dresses, arriving in horse-drawn wagons, traditional dancing of the Sevillana (a type of Flamenco) and many little tents rather than a few huge ones, with a similar set of amusement rides out back. I wondered what would happen if a tent put “Country Roads” on (ignore this if you’ve never been to Oktoberfest). I guess they’d smile, clap and dance some more.

Posted by brad at May 5, 2004 11:47 PM | TrackBack