Living in Spain: Travelling

Living in Spain

I'm really starting to come across more and more people who travel but not the package holiday once a year. Some of them travel in vans, some house-sit, some rent a place and stay a while.

My friend who runs the soft-play place here (she rocked up here from South Africa, via the UK) met a family passing through who had come from the UK on bicycles with two teenagers and an eight year old! I even heard of a family who travel with no budget, they work for food and a nights stay wherever they go, with two small kids!!!

There are lots of options. Scotland recently legalised wild camping, you can rock up with a tent and camp anywhere! I'm thinking about going up there in the summer and having a wonder around. Really you just have to get out of school and you can go anywhere!

I've always been into seeing places, I remember in school they used to teach this idea “People are the same all over the world.” I know what they meant, they meant people have the same rights, and basic needs, all over the world, and deep down are the same eternal stardust or whatever. I remember my utter delight when at twelve my dad took me to Holland for four days (at my insistence) we had Youth hostelled all over Scotland but this was the first time overseas, to my astonished, and lifelong enchantment, I discovered that people are different all over the world! This was HUGE!!! They have different architecture, different bone structure, different cakes, different rules, different faiths...you get the idea.

It became a thing with me, I need to see more places. When I grew up I started a series of trips to different destinations around Europe and eventually also made it to Egypt and Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and America, I'm really keen to see India and Japan.

Poland for Christmas and New Year stands out, I had never seen such bleak concrete, recently-ex-iron-curtain harshness. Nor been treated with such warmth and hospitality. Old men stood in the snow in -20 OUTSIDE the church to give me a seat at midnight mass. You can imaging how I begged to swap places but eventually realised I was starting to dishonour my hosts and accepted.

I had also never eaten cold jellied carp that had lived in the bath for a week to make sure it was fresh at Christmas. We had to relocate six large carp into a bucket to bath or shower, (I gave them all Scottish names) then the women of the house stayed up half the night on Christmas eve (the half not taken up by mass) to jelly them whole – seldom has so much effort gone into cooking something so unpleasant as a cross section of cold carp in clear tasteless jelly!

That trip I also got stranded up the mountain skiing, total beginner, -20, fading light, ski lifts shut, no snow left on the easy slopes so I have to start down the red slope with about one hours practice under my belt. Being Scottish I knew enough about mountains to know I was in real trouble. When I cracked and burst into tears about half way the two lads I was with said “It's OK we made a plan to piggy back you down but we left you alone because you were doing so well!” Then began the wild piggy back ride down the mountain in the dark clinging to the back of my Polish friend who said blithely “If I can't stop don't worry I'll drop you in deep snow and come back.” Lucky for me I was tiny and about 8 stone, we made it with several dumpings in deep snow. For a few amazing minutes I was a pro skier without the work to learn – whipping past the black pine trees with sheets of show thrown out beside me. The moral of my story should be if three lads who can ski plan a trip to Poland and then one backs out, don't say yes to the spare bus ticket if you can't ski – but actually my moral is DO SAY YES!!!

Italy also blew me away but I think I will tell you about that another day....