Blogs from San Fernando , Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain, Europe

Very organized armed with our pre purchased train tickets we joined the masses on the streets of Seville & headed to the main train station. Looking forward to our next stop which is in the region of Cadiz at Puerto Santa Maria. The train trip was easy, comfortable & very clean. 1 & 1/2 hour ride through extremely dry countryside (through Jerez....have to go there). Not one piece was wasted...all being or just had been cropped. Plenty of Olive trees...& hello we find our Spanish 'Picual' variety growing at Gaddums Hill on the shelf here in Cadiz...good choice K&B! Many, many cotton fields. A very quiet port town, old in history & especially to us of interest was Christopher Columbus stayed here for 2 years & of course 'Santa Maria' was one of his 3 ships ... read more

Like I said: busking won’t make you rich money-wise. There are far better reasons to play in the streets though: all kinds of things cross your way. Not only Bulgarian accordeonists looking for rich unmarried women from the north of Europe to have coffees with (see my previous report, May 2010) Salvador for example, was a completely different story. He was walking arm in arm with his wife when he saw me playing at the boulevard with my guitarcase at my feet and my red hat as my officious trade mark. Together they choose a bench that looked out over the sea and they sat there listening quietly for about an hour. Only when I started to pack my things, they came over to buy a cd. Soon I knew a lot about their daughter, their ... read more

Dzzjjj-zzjjj-zzjjjj-zjjjunggggg… Oh no. Not “dzzjjung”, is it? Not now. I silence the “it’s-your-own–fault-told-you-so” moaning voice in my head while I try all possible combinations of choke, gear and gas until I can’t remember anymore which ones I tried. Now I flooded the engine for sure. In the meantime I’m talking to my dear friend who I have left standing there workless with it’s front wheel against the curb for a few weeks now, and I beg him to please keep grumbling this time when the starter keeps quiet. I promise that this week we’ll drive a few hours every day. Yes: I’ve planned to leave Cádiz tomorrow to go back to Holland for a little while. By bike. Or, well… Dzzjj-zzjjjungg. With my parents and my brother Koen, who had driven three thousand kilometers to come ... read more

Cádiz is a peninsula that’s just as big as the city itself: where the houses stop, the ocean begins right after the citywall. All the houses are built really close to eachother in a try to prevent the burning sun to get in. But still both the heat and the humidity that makes the air heavy always find their way in. They seep down through the roofs, they creep through the thin walls with flaking stucco or they slip through one of the few barred little windows, to settle there inside the walls and the rooms, never to leave again. In all walls and rooms, but mainly those at the ground floor. I lived at the ground floor. I had a little window above my sink; a connection to the courtyard of the house. It wasn’t ... read more

After a week I felt more at home in Cádiz then I had felt in Belgium in three years, and only fourteen months later I set foot on Dutch ground again. But of course the city had it’s own drawbacks that made me think of my grey, cold, organized home country with more melancholy than I could have possible imagined before. Rare moments it were, but still. "Mamááá!" Wuh? I hear Nero barking. Birds chirp in the courtyard. "Mamááá!" Somewhere a baby cries. It’s not even half past six yet. I hide my head in my pillow while I try to convince it that I really haven’t woken up yet. My head doesn’t believe me. "Ricardo, callate, ya vengo! Mamááá!" Upstairs the dog goes mad. If I wouldn’t know better, I would get out of bed ... read more