Spain

May 3–7, 2004

A whirlwind tour of Europe.

Madrid

There’s nothing of interest in Madrid. So there’s a royal palace, big deal.

So the rest of the building is painted on the wall, so what?

Monuments everywhere, so?

Metro entrance.

Phone booths.

Bus stop.

Traffic light.

Pedestrian.

Pensioner.

I didn’t like Madrid.

I didn’t plan on hanging around here. My plan was to rent a car and drive to Lisbon, where my flight back home was departing from. It turned out that renting a car from a Spaniard is tricky business. First of all, Spaniards think that being able to speak English is unhip. Second, car rental companies have hardly any automatic cars. Third, not every rental company will accept the standard Russian driver’s license. Fourth, I had to convince the girl at the counter that it’s not that I’ve only been driving for one year (although that’s actually the case), but that the latest version of my license was issued one year ago.

I found a rental company with the right mix of idiocy and affability. They issued me with a Citroën C5.

I must say, the roads in Spain are an absolute treat. The view out the window is wonderful. Almost all of the highways are lighted; rarely do you have to pay to use them (in France it’s the exact opposite). The asphalt is pure perfection. On the hillocks you can see the silhouette of a giant bull with rather prominent balls. There aren’t any cops — you can do 170 and no one cares. The only issue being that you aren’t allowed to stop.

This is how it went down. There I was, driving along, when I realised that I can’t just drive past such beauty. There was no one on the highway in either direction. I pulled over, got out, stretched, and took out my camera, when all of a sudden I could hear the characteristic whine of a police siren right behind me:
“¡Wee-woo!” Cops.
— ¿Problemo señor?
— Not at all, I was just...

So they get back in their car, I turn away, lift up my camera, and press the button. “¡Wee-woo!”
— ¡Get a move on!

To this day I still can’t figure out where they came from. And to this day I still don’t know where they went — as soon as I drove off again there wasn’t anyone around.

I passed five or so villages where I would’ve gladly stayed to live out my days. I decided a long time ago that I am going to live in the mountains in my old age. Granted, I’d had my sights set on the ones in Italy. The mountains in Spain are just as beautiful as in Italy, but there isn’t anywhere else in the world where they serve Italian coffee. That’s a good enough reason to admire Spain from a distance — the coffee here is just a shitty as in the rest of Europe.

After Andorra I headed south again, to Barcelona. As you approach the city from the north there are mountains of such mind-boggling beauty and with such unfathomable silhouettes that it immediately became clear where Gaudi drew his inspiration. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stop, and photos behind the wheel taken at high speeds leave much to be desired. Especially considering that I’d passed most of them already while I was pondering the best angle.

Barcelona

In Barcelona I broke the hotel hunt duration record. First I drove past the entrance to the city. Once I was in the city I tried to get to its centre. Once I found the centre I scoured it for hotels. There weren’t any. So I had to change tack — drive along the crosswise streets, not the lengthwise ones. There wasn’t a single hotel in sight in any of the squares, where you would’ve found at least a couple of hotels in any other city. Hours went by. I stopped in some random square in order to walk to an internet café where I could book a room in a hotel located near some dependable landmarks. I spent an hour looking for a café, found a suitable hotel online, then spent another thirty minutes tracking down the car. Satisfied, I got out my keys and decided to go to the hotel to drop off my suitcase. Then the car wouldn’t start. ¡А-а-а-а-а! Exhausted, I put my hand on the armrest, my head on the headrest, and looked out the window at the darkness descending over the city. The car was parked squarely in front the hotel entrance.

Endlessly wonderful pavement tiles.

You can go up to visit one of the flats in the famous La Perdera building and marvel at the fantastic crapper. The kitchen is equally wonderful.

Traffic lights.

A city like any other. It resembles the Petrogradsakaya neighbourhood in St. Petersburg.

Granada

Next stop — Granada, about 900km from Barcelona. On the way there I turned off the highway and pinched a couple of lemons from a local kolkhoz of some sort.

Even prescient readers probably didn’t manage to guess that after the 8-hour marathon drive from Barcelona I spent at least an hour looking for a hotel in Granada. Except this time it was at night. In a fit of rage because none of the signage made any sense, I drove back and forth along the same streets, which turned out to be the sleepy outskirts of a city which is itself both sleepy and on the outskirts.

My ultimate pet peeve in Europe is that everything is closed in the evenings. The only thing open at night in Granada was a drug-fuelled nightclub and a very dodgy-looking sandwich shop, which looked like an operating theatre run by a father and son duo of deviants. I had to draw a pig (as well as do some oinking) in order to get them to understand which filling I wanted in my sandwich.

On the bright side, there’s an Albert Einstein square.

The historic centre is teeny-weeny, but pleasant, just like in the other 500-odd cities left in Europe with a teeny-weeny historic centre.

Bench.

Spices for sale by the main cathedral.

Cannons at the petrol station.

Stockings and socks are sold around the corner.

But I didn’t buy any. I was in a hurry to get to Huelva, where I had to return the car in time.

Huelva

In Huelva I saw how the world’s going to end: the factories I passed I as approached the city. The only thing they conjure up in my mind is the desire to start a revolution. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully convey the feeling of the world ending since I was filming on the go.

I was supposed to return the car at the train station. I picked this location expecting to be able to buy a ticket there and head straight to Lisbon. Turns out there are hardly any trains departing from this station, and certainly none bound for Portugal. During the car inspection it was established that I’d hit three birds and five thousand insects over the course of my trip. ¡Long live aerodynamics!

Postbox.

Clothesline.

At the train station I was directed to the bus station. At the bus station I was told that buses to Portugal would begin departing tomorrow evening. But it turned out that I could still make the bus that might make it to Ayamonte from where the last ferry to Portugal will be setting off shortly thereafter. I made it.