Spanish Spring

Nerja, Spain

Hey all – I’m writing from Nerja, Spain, which has been my home base for the last few weeks. I’ve finished up classes in Rennes and with about 1.5 months of vacation I decided to spend the greater half working in a hostel in the south of Spain to improve my Spanish. I’ve been in Nerja for about three weeks now and it’s been an interesting but mixed experience, though I’m definitely making the most of the sun and warm weather.

The end has really come pretty quickly – it was a busy last couple of weeks, and the fact that I’m traveling but then returning to Rennes makes it seem like it’s not totally done yet. I’m spending my month away but keeping my same apartment because I’ll be back for about two weeks at the end of May. It was a strange time to leave – my friends weren’t really leaving for good either because they were coming back after the holiday for their exams, but the difference is that by the time I return they will mostly be gone, so my goodbyes essentially happened around early April. Although fortunately there will still be a few of my friends in Rennes when I return, otherwise it would feel a little foreign! Goodbyes were really not particularly easy (they never are), but as always I’d like to think that I’ll have the chance to see the wonderful people I’ve met again :)

Rennes, France

Rennes, France

I spent the last few weeks of my time as a teacher in Rennes concluding classes which was a fairly complicated orchestration because many of my classes had been cancelled or moved due to blockades or illness but I managed to arrange them all and get my students through their final exams by April 12. And amidst it all I had the pleasure of seeing Maddy, Liz, and Meg who made the journey all the way from Colorado to be in France for a week! It was a pleasure to show off Rennes and to spend a day with them in Paris. In all of the madness I ran off to Paris to see Panic! at the Disco which was an incredible show and the third and undoubtedly best concert I've been to in my life, which gave me the time and chance to spend a few days in Dijon and Besançon which has helped me to appreciate Eastern France a lot more. I also managed to have some exciting weekends traveling with Anna, Lacie, Ryan, Danielle, Alex, Jorn, and Luka, from massive castles in the Loire Valley to photogenic doggos in Quimper. And lots of hanging out in Rennes and bottles of Budos' best 2014 and platters of sesame tofu and excellent company and Indian food, courtesy of Anna :) And then it was a quick flurry of packing and I left for Switzerland – I spent a couple of weekends in Lausanne, the first with Alberto and Harsh, two friends that go way back to my favorite Pembridge days in London almost three years ago, and the second with Paul, a wonderful new friend at the EPFL. Time flies quickly but it was an amazing weekend and it somehow didn’t seem like any time had passed at all. With Harsh and Alberto, we toured around the city (small as it was) and took an afternoon trip to Saint-Saphorin to see the vineyards which were very pleasant.

Besançon, France

Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

 

Lausanne, Switzerland

From Lausanne I went off to Málaga and then to Nerja, which is a fairly small beachside town of about 20,000 on the Costa del Sol, the beachy/mountainous stretch of the southern Spanish coastline lying upon the Mediterranean. I’m working at a hostel that I found more or less by chance – they offer a volunteer sort of program where you work for them for a few hours a day and then you stay at the hostel for free, which appealed to me because I wanted lots of interaction with Spanish speakers to improve my fluency. The town is actually fairly touristy, with lots of British, German, French, and Dutch tourists, usually older people looking for warm weather and the beach, or young backpackers doing a tour of Andalusia and looking for a quieter place with beaches that are calmer than Málaga’s. There’s good amount of things to do for such a small town – aside from the five main beaches, there’s some famous caves that I have yet to explore, and there is Frigiliana which is a whitewashed little town in the hills of the Sierra de Tejeda that offers breathtaking views of the landscape and coast, and some hiking around the nearby mountains. Nerja is located between Málaga, Granada, and Almería, so I’ve been able to go exploring to the nearby cities, even as far as Seville and Marbella.

Málaga, Spain

I’ve met a lot of cool people here but obviously the nature of a hostel is that everyone leaves within a few days, or a couple of weeks. I’m volunteering with a very nice girl from Argentina who speaks no English at all so that’s been an element of Spanish immersion that I’ve found valuable. Most of the guests communicate with me in English or French (Spanish is maybe 20% of the time) so it’s really been interacting with Lua that I’ve made the most progress. The work has been mostly reception work, which is tolerable, and cleaning work, which has been generally intolerable because there’s really not enough help at the hostel and it’s a little too much work to put onto one person at a time. The hostel handles about 30 people at its maximum, but there are only three consistent employees, two of which are volunteers, so at peak periods it’s a lot to manage. As it happens, I’m leaving in several days because the situation became a little too intolerable for my taste – the place really is poorly managed – so I’m headed off to Valencia, Murcia, and Granada for the last week and a half of my travels in Spain. But it’s been an enjoyable experience in Nerja, the hostel work aside, and I’ve been thrilled to explore such nice places with interesting new people.

Granada, Spain (round two!)

The upcoming plan is to return to Rennes to explore with my brother, and then a quick trip to Morocco during my free week, and then to Tel Aviv to pick up research over the summer – and then come August, returning to Rochester for med school!

Nerja, Spain; 7 May 2019.

Frigiliana, Spain