¡Estamos Aqui!
POSTED BY CHRISTINE
Ahhhh! Sweet relief! We’ve made it to our first destination after so many days of travel and have had our first official day in Balaguer, Spain: our happy home for the next month. Travel from New York to Barcelona to Balaguer was safe and ultimately seamless, although many conversations happened along the way about our options. No couch surf materialized in Barcelona which left us with a quandry as our host did not expect us to arrive until Wednesday. We weighed our options. Should we get a hostel? Ugh…22 euros each too expensive! Should we camp somewhere? Better price at 21 euros per campsite but would mean negotiating buses out of the city and seemed to be a waste of time and money. We ended up taking a chance at arriving at Jordi’s place early though we could not contact him directly beforehand. We reasoned that we should make our way to a city where at least one person was expecting us. So we, the two very exhausted travelers, enjoyed a mile walk through Barcelona (very scenic, great architecture) from one bus station to another, bought tickets to Balaguer and took a blessed nap in the sunshine in a park under a tree across from the station.
Balaguer lies in the province of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain, directly west of Barcelona and about two hours by bus. It is located at 233 metres above the sea, by the river Segre which is a tributary to the Ebre. The population is 15,281 and it’s absolutely beautiful. We arrived at about 6:00pm and, by asking around, determined that Jordi’s house was a quick walk from where we were. We strapped our packs on and started walking through the small city, marveling at the river that runs through the center (remniscent of Portland, just on a way smaller scale) and the building designs that seemed to span from the mid 1800s to 1950s.
Since we didn’t know where we’d be getting dinner we stopped at a small tienda on our way and bought fresh bread hot from the oven, some olives from their olive bar and a bottle of Vino Verde (green wine, made from young grapes). All of this fresh goodness was purchased for less than 3 euros!!! Can’t tell you how excited we were to discover that we should be able to keep ourselves fed through grocery stores at very reasonable prices. What a relief (especially since right now we get 57 cents on the euro).
Walking a few blocks further and almost directly in front of his house we quite literally ran into Jordi who, upon seeing two tired and confused looking young people with enorgous backpacks asked us, “are you Jonathan and Christine?” I could have hugged him! Seeing him in that moment meant I would be sleeping in a bed for the first time in three days!! Jordi was on his way to return some videos to the library so we all went back upstairs into his apartment house, dropped our stuff off and walked with him to the library. Although I was tired I was so excited (both about being in a new place and about being free of my pack) that I was thrilled to take a walk in the evening air. And what a beautiful evening it was! Everyone was out, as siesta time was long over, the stores were bustling and people greeted each other every step of the way. The temperature was comfortable and a light wind and the lights were shining and everything seemed very magical. Also I hadn’t had proper sleep in a few days so I might have just been hallucinating which would explain the small fairies flying around everyone’s head.
When we got back to the house Jon and I were so excited to go to bed. Our room in Jordi’s house is awesome: tile floors and a large balconey which overlooks the olympic soccer field across the street. During the day you can watch rotating games of boys and girls of all ages and skill level playing team matches. Oh and you can also hear them do their warm up practices to Shakira. Our room has three large beds and so can accomodate up to six in our room, then he has three other rooms with two beds each only meant for hosting people! He is a very lovely man, Jordi. Quiet, unassuming, kind and open. He´s a teacher to 10 year olds and his hobby is to have a farm in the country and a garden plot outside the city and host people from all over the world in order to improve his English as well as the several other languages he speaks. All practices in his house are sustainably minded and is obvious that he aims to leave a light footprint. So we got home from the walk and Jon and I went out to the balcony to toast our having finally made it to our destination. We enjoyed a light supper of the wine, the fresh bread (still warm), olives and tomatoes. As we went out to say goodnight to Jordi he said first he´d like to go over the rules with us. Okay we said and sat down at the table while he took a handwritten list off the fridge and brought it to us. It had about 14 “rules” written in English, all common sense stuff that was easy to agree with but understandable that a host would want to point out, things like “please put things back where you found them” and “please be quiet after 9 pm”. Se we all agreed to these expectations, then he went over the meal times (meals are communal and always prepared by him although cleanup is rotating and participatory) which are at 8:30am, 1:30 or 2 pm and 9 pm. Then he said “and as it is 9pm now we shall start tonight with dinner.” This from a man who didn´t expect us for two more days, whom we haven´t done a stitch of work for and who had just finished hosting five people the previous day! “Oh no thank you, we´re not hungry, we had olives and bread on the balcony, you don´t need to feed us really!”. He looked striken and mildly offended at the idea of not supping with these new people in his house. “But you are my guests!” and then with much more finality, “you simply must eat again then. Come, help me set the table and we will all eat together!” Okay! And we enjoyed a fantastic meal all from his garden and it was lovely.
Then next day he gave us off which was a welcome gift as we´d spent so much time and energy traveling. We walked around Balaguer, laid in the sun by the river, hiked up to the church at the top of the hill overlooking the city and out onto the Pyrnees. And as we watched the sun setting we realized…
…we´re falling in love with Spain and we haven´t even known each other a whole week yet!
Tags: Travel, Tag Index
seeingspain
March 20th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Reading your blogs have left tears of joy in my eyes! I’m so happy for you both 🙂
March 20th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Love these blogs. You’re almost a half world away but we’re right there with you!
March 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Great to learn you are safe and “in love”
March 21st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I hope you have a good time
March 21st, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I’m having a great time following your adventure already! And I’m quite hungry for fresh bread all of a sudden…
March 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Oh how I loved the meal schedule in Spain. Long, social dinner starting at 9pm. Sign me up!
Me disfrute leyendo mucho.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Yay! You made it! So exciting to keep up with your adventures. Between you two and my friend who just gave a slide show on her trip to Guatemala, I totally have the travel bug again, which is at least in part/temporarily satisfied by these stories.
March 25th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
me duele la ba-heena.
January 24th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Its awesome!!! you were really in Balaguer! and guess who is now in my flat? a friend from La Sentiu!!! its not funny?