My EVS in Andalusia 5
Almería y cena con el club de literatura
A couple of weeks ago, Renata and I went on a trip to Almería together with Purchena´s local literature club for teenagers. Manolo, director of the library (and our contact person during the EVS) had arranged a meeting of his group with a young author. Almería, the capital town of our county, is located at the seaside, about one hour and a half away from our village, separated from us only by the mountains of Sierra Nevada.
The surroundings of Almería are most famous for its fruit plantations and greenhouses (oddly enough we did not see any of it at all) and the hilly landscape also known as “Mini Hollywood”. More than once it has been used as a film location for western movies for its outstanding similarity to certain areas in the United States.
Our first destination was the youth information centre of Andalusia where the meeting took place. At the age of 14 the author we were going to meet (now about 22 years old) had written a science fiction novel which the literature club was supposed to have read. But as everyone, Manolo included, had found it to be an awful piece of literature, they had stopped after the first chapters and started a H.G. Wells book instead.
Therefore, the meeting was strongly influenced by our group´s attempt of faking interest and concealing our ignorance of the novel´s content. I am sure, we all felt pity for the author but at the same time we had to keep ourselves back from laughing about the paradox situation.
After the visit of a small exposition in the premises of the centre, we were free to discover the town on our own.
Renata and I decided to visit the castle first. On our way through beautifully colourful streets and passing the Cathedral however, we could not bare the mourning of our empty stomachs any longer and desperately started searching for something to eat. Just before giving up hope, the “empanadas con atún” (samosas filled with tuna) of a tiny shop at a street corner were able to lift our spirits again. (Spanish people seem to eat everything with tuna!)
While having a rest on a bench on the castle hill we were watching a bridal pair taking their wedding pictures at the front gate. The entry in the truly giant castle was free and we spent long time taking pictures of this paradisiac place and of the view over town and sea.
In the afternoon, we went shopping on the main street. In the evening, while ambling around the Christmas fair, we noticed there was only half an hour left to join our group. After asking people for the way, we realized that the meeting point we had thought to be in the town centre, was a shopping centre in the outskirts of the town. Since the buses were only every half an hour, we had to take a taxi and arrived just on time.
Before taking our “privet” bus back, we were barely able to seize the size of the massive shopping centre we had gone for. There is definitely the need to come back!
About a week later, on the 18th of December, all four of us volunteers were invited to the Christmas dinner of the literature club for adults in a tapas restaurant of Purchena. Being used to “Spanish time”, we went there half an hour late, and, to our very surprise, we were the ones to be last. Everyone enjoyed the night chatting, eating Tapas and drinking loads of beer (because it is simply impossible to stop Spanish folk from giving top up´s as soon as a glass is half-empty). The two Turkish volunteers got a couple of presents from us and Manolo, for they will be leaving at the end of the month. And at midnight, they were all singing Happy Birthday to me.