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!