Final Travels, Final Words

The next 9 ½ hours on my flight to Miami (before connecting back home to Atlanta) will certainly allow me ample time to think, write, and reflect as I leave this country I have come to love so much. First I’ll fill you guys in on what I’ve been up to my last few weeks in Spain and then I’ll share some of my thoughts and conclusions about this experience. This is going to be a very long entry my friends, so go grab a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and settle in.

As to be expected, finals week was crazy. Since there are so many cultural distractions in Sevilla during April it is all too easy to neglect a month’s worth of work and then have it hit you like a ton of bricks when you actually have to be tested on it. Granted, study abroad finals are nothing compared to normal university finals but it was stressful all the same. All 4 of my final exams fell on the last Thursday of finals week, I still had to pack up my entire life into 2 (ok 3, I had to buy duffle to accommodate purchases) suitcases, go out Thursday night to celebrate the last night of our program, and be out of my homestay Friday. I also had to plan my post-program travels, book hostels, organize finances, and coordinate train schedules for my additional 10 days in Spain (although Roman did most of it for me). So yes, it was stressful.

I will never forget my last night out with the people I have come to love so much here in Sevilla. The entire night I was beaming so brightly I thought I might explode with happiness as my whole world came together and convened in Alfalfa (the city center). It was a perfect night. I spent all day Friday packing (and recovering) then left with Roman to begin the first leg of my travels in Merida, the capital of the Extremadura region in Spain. We stayed in a gorgeous, brand new apartment with awesome feng shui, a buddah, and a complementary bottle of champagne. The town was very quaint with tons of history and ruins from the roman empire still in unbelievable condition. We went on a night tour of an amazingly well preserved roman amphitheater and old arena where gladiators used to fight. It was very guay (cool).

Sunday afternoon Roman drove me over an hour away to another small town where I could catch a bus to Lisbon, Portugal and continue traveling around Spain and Portugal by myself. If there is anything I’ve learned about myself since being in Spain, it’s that I’m not a city girl. That much has become glaringly apparent after the extensive travel that I’ve done these past 4 months. Experiencing so many new places has allowed me to hone in on the fact that nature, simplicity, open spaces, big mountains, and steep cliffs are what call to me… not so much museums, cathedrals, and metropolitan areas. I appreciate their significance, but I don’t yearn for their presence like I yearn to be connected with my natural surroundings. Specifically, I’m referring to the fact that the entire world seems to be in love with Lisbon and I was quite surprised that I was rather impartial. I enjoyed my time there, especially touring St. George’s Castle, but much like Barcelona, it’s not the place for me. I like walking out my front door and seeing land, open spaces and fresh air, not a maze of metro stations, bus stops, and buildings. Growing up in Atlanta, I used to love big cities and find them so invigorating, so full of life… but it seems my tastes have changed over the years.

PORTO, however. I loved Porto. Maybe because I love wine. Maybe because it is a free spirited artist town. Maybe because it is totally unique and kinda funky. Or maybe because it was just breathtakingly beautiful. The hostel I stayed in was a 100 year old restored building turned into a contemporary art gallery with themed floors. My floor was Portuguese writers, another was Portuguese painters, another Portuguese architecture, and the last… I don’t remember. On my second day in Porto my hostel (again, so awesome) somehow managed to pull some strings and get me a completely complementary tour and port wine tasting at Graham’s Port Winery, an extremely well respected winery whose port wine is distributed all around the world.

Quick interjection for a fun fact: it turns out that my uncle has met and knows personally the family that owns Graham’s. He owns his own wine and liquor store in Atlanta and likes to have a personal connection with the families whose products he carries. Family businesses supporting family businesses, very cool.

Anyways, Porto was so lovely and I wish I could have stayed, but northern Spain was calling and I couldn’t ignore the land of blue and green any longer. So, I found myself once again waking before the sun and catching an early morning train across the border from Porto up to Vigo in Galicia. From Vigo, I took another train to my final destination, La Coruña, on the northern coast of Spain. I was lucky enough to visit the northern coast of Cantabria in early April and loved it so much I had to come back. Galicia is stunning, the landscape and vegetation are SO GREEN from the rainy climate and the stark contrast of the immense cliffs jutting into the deep blue water of the Atlantic is truly awe-inspiring. The topography of Galicia is actually pretty similar to that of Ireland. And bagpipes are popular in both places. And both have excellent beer. In respect to the rest of Spain, the culture of Galicia is definitely very distinct. The majority of my time in Galicia was spent walking miles upon miles along the coast, touring the sites in my path, eating great seafood, and breathing in the salty ocean air. There is something truly special about the northern coast of Spain, a place I would recommend to anyone and everyone without hesitation.

I stayed in Galicia for two nights before packing up my things once again and returning home to Sevilla for a final and heart-wrenching goodbye (..until next time). In one day I traveled 12 hours on two trains and laterally traversed the entire country of Spain. Just watching the scenery gradually evolve from bright green mountains and rivers to flat, dry expanses of nothing, to gradually rolling foothills and acres of olive trees as I traveled further and further south was enough to make the 12 hour ride worth it.

Roman picked me up from the train station Saturday night and the two of us went to pick up the rest of my luggage from my Senora’s house where she had kindly let me store it while I traveled. Inma and I said our heartfelt goodbyes to one another and then I went to spend my last two nights in Sevilla with Roman in the house that he grew up in (but that his family doesn’t live in anymore). On Sunday we went to his house in the country where I was completely taken by the quantity of roaming kittens, terraces, and gardens, all enveloped in the sweet aroma of orange trees. His dad had just returned from the coast with fresh fish and invited us to join him for a late lunch. I was so excited to finally see Roman’s amazing house in the Andalucian countryside and aside from the heavy rain, or maybe because of it, it was a truly beautiful last weekend in Spain.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m gonna get hit pretty hard by reverse culture shock upon my return to the states. However, despite the fact that reality calls and I have to leave my fairy-tale life here in Spain, I am genuinely excited to return to the comfort and familiarity of my life back at home. Boulder is such a part of me and I feel its absence whenever I’m gone for too long! Here is a little synopsis of some of the life lessons I’m taking away from this experience:

1.  The importance of travel. I have always known that experiencing new places and new cultures is important, but never quite understood why to the degree that I do now. Living in a foreign and, by nature uncomfortable, culture forces us to adapt. When I left Boulder, I didn’t realize that to a certain degree my growth as an individual had become stagnant. It’s funny, because for the past few years I have been on a constant search of self-exploration and self-discovery, but only in the ways that were familiar to me; only in ways that had worked for me in the past (namely persistent positivity, physical health, and exercise). Thus I was growing, but growing within my comfort zone; still exploring myself, but only in a very specific context. I became very narrow minded in that I didn’t think any other lifestyle could bring so much light and joy into my life as my own; but Spain kind of shattered that belief for me. It forced me to adapt to a new way of viewing the world outside of my filtered lens and, when I stopped resisting the cultural differences, I found myself living a life completely different than my own, and a life similarly filled with so much light and life I could hardly contain it. This is why travel is so important to me; every new place we go teaches us something new about ourselves, gives us obstacles we must learn to overcome so that little by little we learn to navigate the vast spectrum of circumstances and challenges that life will inevitably throw at us. I think we have to allow ourselves to be in uncomfortable situations that test our limits, so that when the time comes we trust in our abilities and the world isn’t quite as scary of a place.

2.  My happiness is intimately tied to having deep, meaningful personal relationships, more-so, I believe, than for the average person. This has been tricky at times because friendships are often very dynamic and I depend on them as a sense of stability. Before coming to Spain I was nervous about distancing myself from that sense of stability because I didn’t think I would be able to find friendships of the caliber I “needed” so far away and in such a short period of time. That doubt, however, was shattered instantly upon my arrival here. Not only did I learn that the friends that really matter are not going anywhere, even if I do, but I also learned that I can meet people halfway across the world and form amazingly strong relationships with them without any history at all. That realization was perhaps one of the most liberating things I’ve learned abroad. Before moving to Spain I never would have considered the possibility of living in Europe by myself after graduation, but after this semester I trust myself in a way I never have before. Moving to Spain for a year in the near future is now becoming a very real possibility for me.

Here is a final tally of all the places I’ve traveled in the last 4 months:

Spain:

1. Sevilla
2. Cordoba
3. Cadiz
4. Granada
5. Ronda
6. Grazalema
7. Barcelona
8. Santander
9. Laredo
10. Bilbao
11. Huelva
12. Valencia
13. Malaga
14. Merida
15. La Coruña
16. Madrid

Other:

17. Morocco (tangiers, tarifa, chefcheaoun)
18. Prague
19. Lisbon
20. Porto

And now, one final hasta luego. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my life for the past 4 months. It's been an incredible journey :). xo