Granada Part I

Spain is the first place I've really felt a complete inability to communicate. I don't speak Spanish. At all. Of course I didn't speak German really when I arrived there and I didn't speak French, Itallian or German when I arrived in Switzerland, but in Switzerland I was with family half of whom did speak German which was usefull even in the Itallian speaking region and I knew enough German to not feel totally lost in Germany, plus I spent a large majority of my time in Germany at the Goethe Institut learning German in the company of people who, for the most part, spoke English. In fact they were all there to learn German as well so most of them spoke better English than German even if English wasn't their first language. I also, don't speak Czech but everyone in Prague spoke English or German or both so it wasn't too hard to communicate there. The only communication I needed in France was enough to order frites though I feel pretty confident that even if I hadn't been able to speak to people in French I would have been able to understand enough of it to get by there (the same as with German, from having taken it in school).

I feel like a deaf mute in Spain. It's not entirely bad, but it is a new experience for me. People who know me probably wonder how I manage to not have my head explode from the inability to communicate verbally. The truth is I'm actually quite shy and rarely speak to people who haven't spoken to me first so it's not too hard for me to go through a couple days not speaking to anyone. Or it would be easy enough if I didn't need to make any sort of purchases while I was here (my Spanish phrase book was no help what so ever in Barcelona when I needed to find somewhere to buy a new suitcase).

There are some destinctly pleasant aspects of not speaking the language though. In Granada not being able to speak Spanish afforded me the oportunity to have someone else order my food for me. Frankly even back home I enjoy having someone else order for me. I know this will get me in trouble with the feminist set but there's nothing better than having a cute boy order for you except perhaps having a cute boy order for you in a language you don't understand (especially if that language is Spanish).

Granada is beautiful. I can't decide if I like it better than Prague or not. The comparison is mostly unwarranted as the only similarity between the two really is that I love them both in similar ways. Part of that is the type of travel experiences I've had in them. In Prague, after the first miserable night, I took a guided tour and then spent most of the rest of the one day I had there just wandering around the city which was great. I've been having one of the better travel experiences of my life here in Granada though. I met up with a friend who took me out around Granada despite being sick. He was really great and totally willing to just wander around the city with me which is one of my favorite things to do. We went to a couple of really great tea shops that made me wish I could live in Granada for a while just so I could hang out in tea shops everyday.

Of course, I also went to the Alhambra which is just as amazing as you might imagine. The gardens there are awesome and it's springtime right now so everything is in bloom, poppies (at least eight different types and colors), gerber daisies, pansies, and wisteria hanging on every trelise and up the sides of every building. There were also orange trees everywhere (with fruit on them). It was beautiful. Yet I frequently found myself starring at the cobbled pathways under my feet. I'm oddly facinated by cobblestones for some reason. I liked the granite in Switzerland and Germany and I loved the marble in Prague, and in France, of course, the cobblestones were a big attraction, but the cobblestones in Granada take the prize. They mostly aren't cut blocks like the ones in any of the other places I've mentioned, they're just rocks of various shapes and sizes and types. There's marble, and granite, and quartz, and what looks like black basalt, all kinds of stone. Often there are patterns where stones of a couple different types have been placed to create designs but just as often they're is a totally random mix of all kinds of stones.

Prague is a huge city and Granada is pretty small in comparison but they both have intersting histories which could be part of why I feel a similar way about them. Visiting the palace in Prague was a lot like visiting the Alhambra (though the Alhambra is way more interesting) in that it is huge and took centuries to complete and has several different architectural styles and influences because it was built over such a long period of time. All of Europe has an astounding amount of history in comparison to the US but some parts seem to have more of it, they seem to have kept a certain soul (for lack of a better word) that other cities have lost. Prague is that way and so is Granada.

Granada, the Alhambra specifically, was the final place to fall to the Christian monarchs and as a condition of the surrender it was required that Muslims be allowed to remain in the city and practice their religion unharmed. As a result, according to my friend who's been living there for the past 4 months, the city still has a destinct arab quarter. That's an interesting bit of history that might have faded over time, in many other cities it would have, but not in Granada. I don't have a similar example for Prague but it's the same kind of feeling I had there, that the history is more intact there. Perhaps it's the fact that WWII history over shadows so much in a lot of Europe, especially Germany obvisoulsy (which is where I spent most of my time) and Prague and Granada don't have that. There's some war history in Prague, it was occupied by Hitler and there's interesting trivia about it (like the fact that Hitler made them drive on the right side of the street), but it doesn't dominate the historical landscape it's just one part of centuries worth of history.

I couldn't quite explain why Prague was special for me and I can't quite explain why Granada is either, but it is.