Cuenca

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In Alcaniz my hosts were a couple named Jesus and Carmen, who went by the odd nickname Mamen. We hung out at their apartment for a while, and Jesus made me the Spanish version of a fried egg, where you heat up a pan of oil, then drop in an egg, immediately turn off the heat, and let it sit there for less than a minute, and it was really awesome! After a while, we went out to walk around the town, where I saw a stork nest! It was up at the top of the church’s tower, and at first I thought it was some kind of weird decoration, because the nest and the birds were so huge. Jesus was like, “oh yeah, we get a ton of those… sometimes it’s dangerous because the nests will fall on someone.” There were a few giant baby birds in the nest, and the mom was on the other side of the tower having some me-time. Jesus and Carmen are both teachers, and we met a bunch of their colleagues at a bar for dinner, where I tried to keep up the conversation, but was pretty lost for the most part. I guess it’s way easier having a conversation with just one or two people because I say something and then I have some idea what their response will be, but in a big group they start talking and I get lost after a few people have chimed in.

The next morning I had a bus to Teruel, where I was gonna connect to Cuenca after a 5-hour turnaround. Teruel is the capital of its mostly rural province, and in 1999 they found that it was one of the few places in the world whose deaths outnumber births, prompting the city council to come up with the slogan, “Teruel exists.” I came in at about 3 PM, right in the middle of the siesta, and the deserted streets weren’t exactly evidence of the city’s existence. I walked around a while, and returned to the bus station at 4:00 (when the ticket office reopened) to buy my next ticket to Cuenca. As it turned out, the 8:00 bus to Cuenca only goes on Sundays, and so the next bus was the next morning. After looking at my map and seriously considering hitchhiking the 100 km or so to Cuenca, I asked the ticket guy if there were any safer options. He suggested taking the 4:30 bus to Valencia, where he said he was pretty sure there would be another bus to Cuenca, although he didn’t know definitively. It seemed logical to me though, since Cuenca is right in the middle of the route from Valencia to Madrid, and I also reasoned that being stuck for a night in Valencia would be a little better than Teruel, and that I would probably be able to find cheaper lodging. When I arrived in Valencia at 6:30, I had missed the last bus to Cuenca by 30 minutes, so I set out to find a wi-fi connection to search for a cheap place to stay and check the schedule for getting to Cuenca the next day. I ended up being really sketch and sitting down on the sidewalk outside a restaurant that had wi-fi. I would have bought something, but it looked expensive and I was kind of grumpy to be stuck there anyway. All the bus schedules looked pretty sketchy (it listed a few times in a big list, but didn’t give any prices), which was exactly what had gotten me in that situation in the first place, so I decided to just take the 8 AM train. I searched for some youth hostels, but couldn’t find one for cheaper than 30 euros, since it was a Friday in the middle of June. Since I was gonna have to get up early anyway to get on the train, I just decided to go with no lodging at all! I walked around Valencia for a while, and found a park where they were having a free film festival. That night they were showing King Kong and Jaws (which in Spanish is rather comically called “Shark”). I stayed for both movies, which was kind of an endurance test, but it was really fun being with the Spanish audience, who were constantly making catcalls and stuff at the characters (especially during Shark), and smoking the whole time. The movie finished at almost 3 AM, at which point I did some middle-of-the-night sightseeing around the medieval district. At about 5:30 I went to the train station to sit down and had a few bouts of sleep in 10-minute intervals. The scenery from the train was really beautiful, although it all seemed pretty surreal since I was half-asleep almost the whole time. It seemed like I would wake up and see plains, then wake up later and see some mountains, and then see plains again, so I’m not sure if I was just confused or if the landscape between Valencia and Cuenca is loco.

In Cuenca my host wasn’t at the train station (at that point I guessed she hadn’t gotten my message about my change of plans), and I found a wifi spot and confirmed that there was no message from her. So I started walking and in about 5 minutes I saw a familiar-looking girl who asked “are you Nathan?” So that turned out to be a super lucky coincedence! She had just gotten my message, and was walking to the train station to see if I was still there. It turned out that she hadn’t gone to sleep that night either, so we went to have some delicious lunch and then took a 6-hour siesta, which was the best of my LIFE!

When we got up, we went to meet her middle-aged friends Rafaela and Concha, who had a 5-year-old little Chinese girl! We had some coffee at a bar and then walked across another valley on this incredible bridge and did a short hike on the other mountain before coming back and eating some weird Spanish burger. After eating it, Rafaela and Alejandra (my host) debated about whether it was a mix of different parts of pigs or a mix of different animals altogether, both of which made my stomach hurt a little. I was just happy they didn’t discuss that before eating! The next morning Alejandra had to work, so I went to the Cuenca Museum of Spanish Abstract Art. Cuenca is probably the most ambitious town in the world - they’ve set a goal to become the cultural capital of Europe by 2016, so I had pretty high expectations for this museum, and I was not let down. It’s in one of the “hanging houses” that are literally hanging over a cliff, and the views out the window even kind of distracted from the paintings. After that I met Alejandra and she, Rafaela, and I drove to the next town to check out this festival they were having. When we showed up, there was a DJ set up, with a small group of weirdly gross grungy Spanish kids dancing pretty halfheartedly. It looked like they had probably been dancing all weekend, and so now they were mostly just moving their shoulders and letting their arms dangle - it was a really funny sight, especially considering their absolutely hideous hair-do’s. Apparently the mullet never went out of style in Spain, and they have a ton of variations on that idea that are pretty popular, including one where it looks like you have a buzz cut, but let the mullet part grow as far down your back as you can. I really wanted to take some pictures of those, but thought it would be in bad taste. After that we ate at a restaurant that Rafaela said was “hippie-funky” (ippy-foonky), which made me laugh. We drove around and hung out for the rest of the day.

The day after that I did some planning and found that to go to most of the places I want to, the bus tickets are pretty expensive, and that I would end up having to be really frugal, and then would certainly come back home with NO money, so I decided to go next to Madrid and then come home this weekend. I went to another museum that at first was a little underwhelming. The first hallway had a mix of decent and less-than-impressive abstract art, and then I was a little annoyed because there were several possible directions to go and it was really unclear which way I was supposed to go first. But that turned out to be the whole point! I kept finding new corridors and a bunch of weird basements with creepy sculptures and “found objects” in them. And then there would be rooms with a bunch of really awesome paintings from artists who I discovered in the other museum that I really liked. It was definitely the most disorienting building I’ve been in, and it was really so much fun running through and trying to figure out where you are! Later, Alejandra and I hung out some more, and this morning we got up and had some chocolate con churros, which were awesome! They’re these fried batter sticks served with hot chocolate, which is basically syrup, and that is breakfast in Spain! And after that I went to the bus station and got on the bus to Madrid, where I’m typing this right now!

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Photos

Alejandra's Balcony
We couldn't get a picture to come out well, but it's still awesome!

Hanging Houses
One of them is the Museum of Abstract Art

Creepy Gummy Bears
in the crazy museum. Next to them was a sign that said "please don't touch me, kids. Thank you."