Wegens succes verlengd

I couldn't think of another way to say it in English... Extended due to success, maybe?

Either how, the story is this: I've enjoyed writing this blog so much and some people seem to have enjoyed reading it up to a certain point (thanks Mom!) that I have decided to continue writing, just for the fun of it. But as I am no longer living in Valencia, I thought it would be inappropriate to have a blog named 'Linda in Valencia'. So I have created a new blog called 'Linda in the rest of the world' where I'll be posting the exciting things I go through when I'm not writing my thesis or going to class. Cough. Or maybe I'll write about the philosophical thoughts I come up with while I'm in class. Anyway, surf to lindarow.blogspot.com and find out!

Epilogue

So that’s it… I’m home! Actually I’ve been home for a week, but I’ve been so busy moving all my stuff from Valencia to Boortmeerbeek and from Boortmeerbeek to Leuven, that I haven’t found the time to write until this lazy Sunday afternoon.

It’s strange and not strange at the same time to be back in Belgium. It’s strange in the sense that I thought it would be a lot stranger to be back here, but the strangest thing of all is how normal everything seems to be. It’s like I’ve never been away, like spending 5 months in Valencia was just a dream, gone in the blink of an eye. On Monday morning I was back in class and the conversations with my fellow students were as they have always been, the professors were distant behind their cathedra as they have always been, my flatmates were enthusiastic and silly as they have always been. While I was in Valencia, I felt I had changed so much, learned so many new things, became this new person, and back here nothing seems to have changed and it’s like I’m catapulted back to who I was 6 months ago.


But enough introspection, because I still owe you a report of what I’d been doing during my last days in Valencia. Being an economist, I did my very best to optimize my utility by maximizing the amount of activities that were still on my wish list with the restraint of having a mere 48 hours to do all those things. First of all, Kobe arrived in Valencia on Thursday afternoon, while I was on campus for my last exam. I came back from the exam wanting to go out straight away, but because of sudden tiredness we only got as far as café Soret. We had dinner in pizzeria Michelangelo (shame shame, Italian food in Spain!) and then picked up Cécile to go to el Café del Duende, a flamenco café where we met up with Ben and Jon to see a flamenco show.

On Friday we slept until late (very bad for my plan to maximize the number of things to do in 48 hours) and started packing. Best leave everything prepared and then go out without having to worry about whether all my stuff would fit into two suitcases. (By the way: it didn’t.) In the afternoon, sick of puzzling with coffee pots, heavy books and pairs of shoes, we went to the city centre to visit the museum of José Benlliure. It is not really a museum, but the house where the Benlliure family lived and kept their vast collection of art and curiosa. It has a very beautiful city garden. Then we walked through the city centre in the direction of Mercado Colón to have a horchata. Later that evening Guillermo came by to lend me a scale to see how much the suitcases weighed. You don’t wanna know. :-p


We stayed in that night because the boys had said we were going to watch a terribly funny Spanish movie without subtitles. But the three of them remained locked in Saúls room in the greatest secrecy. I started to suspect that perhaps they were preparing a surprise for me… but absolutely nothing happened. Well, no hard feelings. :-)

On Saturday we got up and went straight to the Mercado Central. Initially the plan was to fill up the remaining kilos with jamón and cheese, but as there were no remaining kilos to be filled up, rather the opposite, we just went to feel the atmosphere one more time. From there we went to the Muvim, the Museo Valenciano de la Illustración y del Movimiento, where we saw three free expositions. Nice place to go, in a modern building not far from the station, in the middle of a Roman park, filled with columns and statues. We had lunch in Cervezeria 100 Montaditos, the one that serves 100 different mini sandwiches. Then we went back home to clean up my room and arrange the last things in the suitcases.
We went to café BlaBla with Guillermo to say goodbye over a cup of coffee (or a glass of pineapple juice, in my case). He’s been a really good friend and mentor and I will miss him a lot. As Kobe and I still wanted to do some shopping, we said goodbye around 7 and went back to the city.

We had dinner in a tapas bar called Cañas y Tapas, a restaurant I had passed several times and that looked cosy. Good tapas. By the way, should any of you ever go to Valencia, I have a large collection of cards from good places that I’ve been to. Feel free to ask to borrow them.
After dinner we met Jon at Plaza de Toros to go to the Moroccan teahouse in Ruzafa. I had asked a lot of people to come, but almost no one could. But we had a very fun evening, just the three of us, with live Berber music and belly dancing.

And on Sunday we got up early… to get to the airport. José brought us by car. And that was that… Mom and Dad picked us up at the airport three hours later, the weather even planned a special welcome rain shower as we left the airport car park, and home was… home.

I wish I had something deep and philosophical to say about the whole coming home thing, but it was just… it was, you know? I suppose I had suspected to feel all these huge emotions and to be crying litres of tears, and when the moment came, I was so prepared for saying goodbye to my beloved city that I was really at peace with it.

So I leave you, without any deep or philosophical comment, but with pages and pages of the adventures I’ve lived in Valencia. I will really miss posting on this blog, and I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.


So well… bye, I guess!

Almost leaving VLC... but not yet

Sigh... It's almost over... I just can't believe it... Though it's not yet over, for there remains one obstacle to be tackled: my very last exam tomorrow afternoon! But before that, my boyfriend will arrive here in Valencia, to enjoy my last two days here in Valencia together with me and to help me carry all my luggage when I get back...

The boys and I are already looking for someone new to replace me here at the apartment. Ok, I'm making it sound really pathetic... We're looking for someone to rent my room. I have put an ad on the internet and over 10 people have called in less than 24 hours! So the boys now have a long list of candidates to choose from. I'm curious to know who my sucessor will be.

And now the succession of goodbyes is beginning... Today I said goodbye to Lena, who is leaving for Viena, Cécile will go on the same day as I, I've said goodbye to Steffi, Nynke... It's so weird, I just don't realize yet that it will never be the same, as it has been these past months. These same people will never be in Valencia all at once as they are now. I do hope I'll get to see everybody again some day...

The luminous point is that with goodbyes... come goodbye parties! Cécile gave a great party last Saturday, and just yesterday I spent the evening in Lena's favourite restaurant eating our favourite chocolate cake... So you see: every downside has an upside!

So now I'm off to ponder what the upside of my exam tomorrow might be... Sigh.

How to be overwhelmed by a street

It takes a pretty little street, with beautiful houses and balconies with plants and flowers and with a lot of minuscule antique bookshops with old, crooked bookshopkeepers in them. The street should be near a place you have passed a thousand times without noticing it. You should be leaving the place within a short time horizon and you should be under the impression that you have seen about everything there is to be seen in that place.

All of those conditions were fulfilled as I wandered past the little park near to the hostel where I spent my first week, on my way to the bus. I have taken the bus at the big bus stop just outside El Corte Inglés at least a hundred times, and yet, I have managed never to notice the beautiful little street hidden between Calle de la Paz and El Corte Inglés. I just stood there, at the beginning of that little street, bordered with plants, occupied by half a dozen tiny little antique bookshops, a subterranean café, and small art gallery. I just stood there and thought: "How come I never noticed this street before?" And it dawned on me that there must be so many streets unwandered, so many places undiscovered, so many sights unseen by me in this beautiful city that I will be leaving behind in less than two weeks... and it made me feel melancholic... and cheesy, for the writing matter.

Free & more or less dry

Towards the evening it stopped raining. Fed up with sitting down in my room and the library all the time, I decided to go swimming. Proof of the weirdness of human nature: to wait until it is dry to go get wet voluntarily.

After sitting down 14-15 hours per day (and laying down the rest of the hours), it feels really good to get that lazy butt of mine moving. Amazing how free one can feel gliding through the water, and how contradictory that is to the fact that you're actually moving in a human-size aquarium not more than a few cubic meters big. Yet again proof of the weirdness of human nature.

I had more or less expected to find Cécile there in the pool, because she swims every day. And indeed, there she was, so between laps we chattered away about nothing and everything. Nice to have a friend around... and to feel free in that little human aquarium.

Water

All the rain that did not fall in the past few months is pouring out of the sky right now. I woke up this morning hearing the wind howl between the flat buildings and hearing the noise of what seemed to be a gigantic shower. I closed my eyes tightly hoping that the sound would just be some white noise from a vanishing dream, but no... water continued to pour down as I got up.

The wind is so strong that taking an umbrella is absolutely useless. Guillermo just explained to me that in Valencia, it doesn't rain vertically, but horizontally. So I set off to campus trying to protect myself - in vain - from the liters of water flying around with nothing but a light raincoat on.

It didn't work. I got to the exam completely soaked, down to my underwear. Trying to explain the exceptional treatment of agriculture in pre-Uruguay Round GATT trade in wet tweed pants is less than ideal. I was happy to get out of there as soon as possible!

The soil seems to have lost its capacity to absorb all the water, because the rain just stays on the streets and pavements. No matter where you walk, when you get out onto the streets you're walking through almost half a centimeter of water, trying to make its way to the lowest point.

Meanwhile, I just saw on tv that it is snowing all over Spain! There are 5cm of snow at a mere 30km of Valencia! Seems this whole spring thing was just another quirk of nature...

The rain wouldn't bother me so much had I not decided that this afternoon would be off-time and had I not made plans to go walk in the centre, to go to the cinema,... with this rain, I'm not going anywhere. Sigh.

If you can't beat them...

... join them, or... get someone else to join them for you! Hehehe! Yesterday Guillermo went to the library at 8 to study and he got me a seat before the masses occupied the library-castle again. (It makes me think of Al Pacino in Angels in America, saying: "Clout!" - grin!)

Today I was less fortunate and I had to get up myself to be there in time to get a seat for me and Lena. I just spent 13 hours in that building... no wonder I have absolutely nothing to tell you.

So... that's all I had to tell you. Really.

Freaky Early

As during the exams the library is quite a popular place to be - all the fashionistas go there, as I have told you before -you have to be there early to mark your spot for the rest of the day. So I got up at 7:45 and arrived at the library at 8:45 - which in a student's world, is early - and it was... full. Spanish students are freaky early people, and it fills me with guilt!

But the surprising thing is this: the library opens at 8am, has 8 rooms with place for about 120 people to sit down, so you do the math and calculate exactly how many people have arrived withing the 45-minute span in which I was completing my morning ritual. And with all do respect to all you people out there who do go to places at 8am: I refuse to be seen anywhere outside my bed at 8am unless I'm being paid for it!

So that's how I discovered the studying spaces in the aulario buildings - oh, how exciting my life is! - where I spent the morning with Lena, Steffi and Carola and -yawn- my notes from Economia Social for the zillionth time.

For the rest, not much news. Life isn't very exciting this time of the year, regardless of whether you're living in a city filled with palmtrees and parties. I guess the most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that I burnt my broccolis to coal while sewing the hem of my new trousers.

It's still a strange notion to me that in 3 weeks I'll be home again. It seems like I still have an eternity to spend here. Time flies - and some day I'll wake up and say: "Oh my god! I'm 40!". And I suppose that's how it happens... that in three weeks time, I'll wake up and say:"... How come it's such lousy weather? Oh yeah..."