The Lotus Eaters

I was only meant to stay two nights. On the 11th day I was running short on money and excuses. I said a reluctant farewell to Cadiz, feeling as if I'd lost something of myself to that peninsula. I put it down to brain cells, it turned out to be my sunglasses. And so, forevermore, I shall remember and half remember Cadiz as the land of the Lotus Eaters.

I took a boat across to Cadiz, sat on my rucksack, we pulled way out from the mainland port before setting our sights south on the bleached city. The water was a perfect blue and windsurfers panned around the bay to the right of me, a few heading further out to sea like us. After 40 minutes the boat reached the harbor and I dismounted in a state of subdued giddiness. Everyone I'd spoken seemed to have a fierce affection for Cadiz; 'the people there are mad, wind on both sides you see'. The oldest city in Europe held little evidence of its historical past, it hid deep under ground, whilst what lay atop was like a wild rabbit warren, only just contained by the sea.

Despite all the anticipation, my overriding feeling after arriving at the hostal was disappointment. I thought I was looking for something electric but I realise now it was actually as simple as needing to be hugged, to be grounded. I couldn't light the gas for the kettle and I was about to start crying when I felt a hand on my shoulder. 'Youre coming to the beach' Lichy told me. I crumpled with gratitude, collected myself enough to get my bikini on, and I was soon on Santa Maria beach hiting a ball with Thin Lizzy. That night I ate chicken wings on the terrace and met the spitting image of my brother, a German nursing student named Manuel who played the saxophone and had a smile that split his face in two. All would be well as long as I didnt think too much. 

Manual left a few days later for Portugal. I'll always remember his mañana approach to life, except it wasn't said with a throaty growl a la San Miguel ad, rather 'manyanya'. That, and his ephusive consumption of porritos and bananas in equal measure.

Lichy was some sort of IT lecturer from Cordoba in Argentina. He showed me a text book he had written with a picture of himself on the back looking much more IT than he did then, in a singlet and wayfarers, parasol clamped under one arm. The 20 something year old had arrived in Cadiz with his brothers a few weeks before, realised it all rather suited him and decided to stay until he absolutely had to return. We both slept on saggy mattresses in the same dorm and every morning ached like we'd scaled K2. I was his 'English nurse' for the duration of my stay as he'd broken his toe playing football and I bandaged it affectionately beyond what was necessary. We'd have long semi-fantastical conversations about the health of the toe and wether it could be saved. Lichy was a cuddle monster just like me, and so solace was found.

Tito was a Galician giant who worked at the hostal. A beautiful dance floor diva, he felt every beat and break with the sincerest other-worldly expression on his face. He had an incredible capacity for making soul mates with travellers he couldn't speak to, simply through his sheer, all-inclusive enthusiasm for 'la playa'. He also managed to pull off one of the bravest hair dos I've ever seen; a grade 2 all over apart from the lower back of his head where a medley of dreads and silky soft stands hung down his back. 

Thin Lizzy had been a history student in London and matched Tito's emphatic grinds with upbeat jitterbugging. She took me out running around the walls of Cadiz before we cycled to the west edge of the peninsula and watched the sun drop into the sea. I found Lizzy so bemusingly English against the backdrop of forgotten nationalities, everybody's origin was Casa Caracol, life before and after that didn't matter. It also digressed that she was the niece of the head of the Uk Buff branch and on the night she cooked everyone tagine I insisted she did her uncle proud with a demonstration of his quality product. The clumsy performance left everyone in mock awe, crying for an encore, the perfect desert.

I had stopped thinking too much and found a sort of restless peace; sleep, pancakes, smoke, beach, eat, drink, dance. We all laughed a lot, especially at night when the wind battered you from all sides and it was all you could do to keep warm. My earliest memories of Cadiz is of bottomless happiness actually, it's just that I got hurt towards the end and it makes it hard to remember just how good the good parts were. 

Cadiz itself as a day tripper, had no particular wow factor. My first full day in the city I spent reunited with Levi and Kate and for the majority of our sightseeing time we stood giggling in front of a naughty vending machine (it contained, amongst other perverse objects, an inflatable duck with a disproportionately large oroific.....). 'Good luck spending three days here' said Levi as I left them at the station. I'd harrumphed obstinently under the impression that Laurie Lee had been very fond of Cadiz. It wasn't till later that I realised that I had got Cadiz confused with Sevilla, and in fact Laurie rendered the city a bleached, unpromising rock, second in awfulness only to Gibraltar. 

The Sherry Triangle

left La Banda early and it was only when I was walking out of it that morning did I appreciate how Sevilla sprawled southwards, calling for the relief of the sea. The night shift guy didn't seem too pleased that I wanted my toast and tea so early, and I mumbled my apologies sleepily, feeling underprepared for the hike after a weekend of drinking and no rest. I passed the usual strip joints, one which was slightly disturbing, with a female mannequin beckoning out of the window for a night of seedy lovemaking. The first day after a break is not usually that hard, your muscles have forgotten to hurt and you rediscover the novelty factor to a certain extent. The second day is a drag because you realise you have to do it all over again. I found a room to stay in at a family pensiones and the woman came in half way through my nap to pick some oregano from the plant on my windowsill.

The next days walk to Las Cabezas was a killer. The path zig zagged when there was own and when there wasn't the road felt hard and endless beneath my feet. There was less general interest in what I was doing by passers by which I should have appreciated but sometimes it felt unfriendly. As midday approached I saw sadly that the road diverged far west of my final destination before dropping down for another three miles. Just then a lorry with plants in the back slowed next to me and two council labourers asked me if I wanted a lift. I hopped in with my rucksack on my lap and the elder guy mowed down that awful dog leg in 7 minutes whilst the younger had his arm across me, tapping cigarette ash out the window. They dropped me at the turning for Las Cabezas and I marched up the hill that would eventually drop down to the town. A hippy van passed me, hooting with encouragement but I would have preferred a lift and with the town in my sights I decided to take a nap in a crook of the hill. I jumped off the road and into a field where buttery snails clustered the stalks of crops and various six legged creatures went about their business. I lay down and dreamed in and out of consciousness for the rest of the afternoon, catching snippets of the audiobook I'd put on. When I got into town, the hostal I'd found was shut down and it seemed that there was nowhere else to stay, until I asked a waitress at a snail bar and she pointed to a sign. A Camino sign. Above a bar. I marched towards it, swinging my pack around like a proud Brownie who'd just earned her orienteering badge. I went into the bar, asked for the keys, got the number for the guy who had the keys, called the guy, waited in the bar and was stared at, dishy Albergue guy arrives with keys and opens the door to a bloody nice apartment with a washing machine! Wave off dishy Albergue guy manically and rush to get guacamole to celebrate. Fully vegetabled on the sofa, I watched the weather report and saw freaky electric storms coming my way. I guess I wouldn't be walking tomorrow. 

Two days later I arrived in Jerez and was surprised by the number of tourists in the town. I found a small room close to the centre of the town and after a sleep I decided to go and find the anthropological museum. After an hour or so of getting lost and discovering a very beautiful church, my attention was diverted to finding a pistachio ice cream, which was similarly fruitless so I settled for a banana and caramel. The acrid taste stayed with me as I turned in for the night and dreamed of seeing the sea the next day.

By 10 o'clock I had arrived in El Puerto de Santa Maria and found a hostal which was meant to be closed for the weekend because of the local feria but they let me stay anyway. I walked along the beach and tried to think about what it all meant, me being here, wether it was at all significant, even to me. The trip had been fraught with frustration and disappointment but not the sort of hero worthy challenge I had hoped for. Maybe because I was afraid, I repelled the very thing I was looking for. The ocean spread out in front of me like a big full stop, interrupted only by the peninsula of Cadiz. Tomorrow I would take the boat out but I couldn't help feeling I should swim, the way monks wear horse hair vests. I shoved my hands in my pockets. Insatiable. 

Sevilla

Sevilla absolutely astounded me. The walk from the station to the hostal alone was beautiful, I wound through the roads of the Jewish quarter, passed beautiful cafés and shops and then found myself in the huge plaza surrounding the cathedral, where a dozen horse and carriages anticipated deep pocketed tourists and their drivers dozed in the midday heat. I found La Banda on a side road off the plaza, a discreet door lead into an open plan living area, plastered with festival posters and I instantly spotted a kettle and what looked like an undiminishible supply of tea bags. Ollie checked me in, he was so friendly and reminded me of one of the woodland creatures who help make Cinderlla's dress. I'm afraid i talked endlessly, right up until I shuffled upstairs to my room where I met a German girl in the bunk above me and we did the funny jarring bunk bed hand shake, then I went off to see the town. It was really hot, I walked back the way I had come to find a supermarket and then sat on a bench for a while to people watch. 

That evening I had the rooftop meal with everyone else and met Bob, this guy from Tennessee, who said 'Hi, my name's Baaaaab' and I had to suppress the urge to try and talk like Mata from Cars and fail horribly. It was Bobs 'first time in Europe', a phrase I was unfamiliar with up until then but soon understood its significance with all the Aussies, Americans and Canadians coming through. I felt like a lot of the bonding had been made at the bars the night before and watched from the sidelines for the most part as 'and do you remember when...?!' bounced back and forth. I was invited to go and see the mushrooms, these giant wooden constructions which were of some purpose, but when we got there they weren't lit up like they should have been. I accompanied Bob, two Canadians and a Manchunian GP back to the hostal and stayed up until 3 as Bob formally educated me (in the most informal sense of the word) on the ins and outs of homosexuality. Despite being absolutely exhausted, I went to bed with my eyes very wide open.

The next morning I woke up at seven, despite being very tired, and I couldn't get back to sleep so I went down for breakfast. I sat down opposite a very hung over Australian who was waiting for her Blabla car driver to take her to Granada I think. She was one of those large chested alpha females who drinks like a fish and gives as good as she gets. Over a mountain of toast and tea we dissected the drivers rather friendly what's app messages and correlated it with her busty-7lb lighter messenger picture. The conversation lead on to my uncomfortable couch surfing experience early on in my trip and as more sleepy eyed guests joined the breakfast table, I realised I was commanding a bit of an audience and shrank into my mug of tea. It's not something I've written about, I'd find it hard to create the upbeat spin I've managed to maintain for most episodes, but I do tell the people who ask if I've had any bad couch surfing experience because it might help someone make better choices than I did. 

After Scot, another Aussie, had chaparoned the slightly apprehensive alpha dog to her lift, we organized to go with a Tazzie couple and an English girl to the Alcazar. We were a very merry band, imitating peacock mating calls to try and encourage the bird down from its lofty lad pad, and I was even able to arrogantly critique the styles of columns from my two years of dossing Classical History Alevel.

Upon returning to the hostal, we made a really nice salad and I managed to persuade the crew to join me on a day trip to Decathlon. Turns out they don't have Decathlon in Australia and I filled their imaginations with reasonably priced canoes and sportswear on mass when all they needed was a pair of socks. My shopping list was a bit longer; I'd managed to pack the swimsuit from when I was 12 and my socks were in such an abominable state that even after washing they were pretty crispy and odouros. I located a store on the outskirts of town and we set off in the late afternoon. After half an hour of walking, we were definitely not in tourist town anymore; we passed by the splendid remains of the faria and when Kate discovered that we were only half way, I felt that the general team moral was lowered. I realised I was more like my father than I thought, dragging groups of unwitting foreigners to the edge of a map for a cause only apparent to myself. When I saw a sign with 'Sevilla' with a line through it, the satirical nature of the entire situation struck me and with forced gusto I lead the group along a train track to the hailed industrial pack where our final destination was marked. I think everyone realised something wasn't quite right when they saw the size of the car park; it was tiny and ran around the edge of the monstrous building with a similarly out of proportion door. As Levi rang on the buzzer, I got that fuzzy feeling in my face and feet that you get when you realise what a fool you've been. The receptionist of this Decathlon distribution centre looked very confused as four bedraggled foreigners crawled into the foyer and one explained in broken Spanish that they only wanted socks. We rehydrated with the water dispenser and I am so lucky that I had chosen three such good natured traveling companions who saw the hilarity of the situation and could be comforted by the promise of a Mcdonalds beer on the way home. We arrived back at the hostal just in time for dinner, and after a few drinks and an unorthodox game of Jenga, the profoundity of the fact that we'd only met at breakfast hit us when someone asked how long had we been friends. 

The next morning we reunited for an expedition to the Plaza de Espana, which I hadn't planned on seeing. We arrived and I lost all my breaths. It was absolutely incredible, this vast semicircular palace, cupping a stream with pleasure boats and bridges, and a fountain in the centre. I found my voice but it came out as ecstatic squeals. Aesthetics like these are really important to me and the way I feel, and Sevilla went beyond the call of duty on this matter. Isabella's park, which ran up to the plaza, was similarly magnificent and you could rent cycling buggies in groups and careen around the park's paths manically. We discussed the possibility of touring Europe on one fitted out with a battery and solar panels, which stimulated many tangents and possible buggy accessory ideas, and reminded me of a Quentin Blake book I used to read to Deveraj. We went to the bus station for Kate and Levi to book their tickets for Conil for their work away and then returned to the hostel for lunch before all three of them left, Scott was going to house in Valencia. The last lunch had to be disbanded as time had run out, and as I waved the intrepid explorers off, feelings of an empty nest crept in and I plonked myself down in the living area downhearted. 

Here I met Zach from Lincolnshire (like the sausage) and two Canadians, a thoroughly drunk Kevin and a forbiddingly knowledgable Joules. Zach, I admit, I had already boxed in, with his DIY singlet, heavily sunned glow and hair-of-the-dog hangover prescription. What the box was exactly I don't know, I don't think anyone really understands their prejudices, but it wasn't, as I later found out, a highly talented student of art at Edinburgh. He was lovely and honest in a way I had never thought to be, openly confessing his uncertainty in traveling for the first time on his own and gratitude for the experience of Kevin and Joules, who had adopted him in Malaga.

That evening I did another walking tour, this time of the more recent history of Sevilla. It was the same erratic Moroccan, whose manner I found less humorous and more grating the second time round. I had also acquired a fairly serious German friend, who said he had lived in Sevilla before, but seemed to know nothing about the city, and after the tour we were joined by two sets of Americans for some Tapas. One group were from Miami, and I found them so clinical, particularly the guy, everything they said seemed so empty they must have been thinking of something else. The other group were two guys who had been studying abroad in Italy. One of them chastised me for eating ice cream in Spain 'you've never had ice cream until you've eaten it in Italy' and the other started educating me on how the underground in London worked. They were so presumptios it was depressing, the type that only ask you a question to answer it themselves. Sometimes I get scared to start walking again but I felt like my star was telling me pretty loud and clear that it was time to move on. I only ordered a starter and made my excuses to leave, desperate to be alone.

My last night in Sevilla I ate on the terrace with everyone, comforting the Tenesse cousins for the their traumatic bull fighting experience and internally rebuking the two American students whose blood lust after the performance was tangible. Eli appeared, an American student who had been studying Arabic in Moroocco, posturing like a peacock in a clean jacket and authentic leather sandals. There was a mysterious guy who looked like Jesus, with frighteningly blue eyes, who had just done the Northen way, and we spoke for a while about walking. I felt that he was probably better suited to my task than I was, a lean striking prophet, captivating individuals with his soft hill billy tones. He fixed me before I left for bed; 'keep on walking'. 

Into Sevilla

As I stole away from Cordoba, past the usual lurid strip joints and one rather inconspicuous 'top secret' grow shop with a happy stoner ants mural, I assumed there would be the same agricultural routes running parallel to the main road for me to walk on. This was not the case. It seemed that south of Cordoba business was in mass produced ceramics, and this did not, apparently, demand the same type of transport access. And so, once again, I braved the hard shoulder, and was honked severely for my struggles, presumably to discourage such future acts of insanity. Occasionally I was spared by a roadside community and I could enjoy pavements and the shade of trees. Laurie observed the healthy covering on the people of Valdepenas and I observed a similar correlation between the southerly direction and growing waistlines. I considered the practicalities of whaling it in the frying pan of Spain and found none, other than to throw off the presumptions of someone like me, who thought they lived off Mediterranean salad and the fruits of the sea.

My first stop was Almadover, an almost white town which hugged a rock with a castle on top. I had no intention of visiting the castle but some how ended up there whilst looking for my hostal, which was at the bottom of the rock. My homing skills seem to lose satellite reception in vaguely built up areas and I always end up somewhere of touristic interest when all I want is a bloody bed and Oreos. I slid back down the hill in my own perspiration and was asked, very earnestly, by the hostal receptionist if I wanted a double with an ensuite or a single with a bathroom in the hall, both the same price. I took advantage of this rather questionable business strategy and slept like royalty in the double. 

I after a couple of days I found a canal which I was able to follow, for the most part, all the way to Sevilla. Sometimes I walked through orchards of orange trees whose paths were chained off and so I hid every time I heard a tractor. One day I was caught, 'can I pass through?' I asked meekly and the guys face broke into the best smile, it was like the earth was smiling it was joyful, 'of course!' He said 'why not?'. The towns were dotted more closely together now, their main streets, no matter how small, were lined with benches. There were poppies too, and these little snails, yellow, pink and pearl, which clustered in close tribes on almost anything narrow and green. 

My last days walk before Sevilla was long. I was panting and my eyes felt like they were the wrong way up, I slumped against a wall and resigned myself to gravity. Something twanged in my left leg. In the pensiones I found some ice and put it on my leg but it felt uncomfortable, the muscle on the front had gone really hard. I watched a documentary on Dawn Porter living off crackers and apples for a month to achieve size zero, which made me stop rubbing my leg and start prodding my belly. In the morning I tried to put my rucksack on and realised I couldn't walk. The muscle spasm in my leg hadn't gone down so I went back to bed with it propped up in the hope that something would drain out of it. I had breakfast at the pensiones, which was painted in really fresh colours and had potted plants and hanging baskets, and the owner had a glass eye. It was a nice break from yoghurt and bran flakes at 5.30 in the morning and I felt excited for Sevilla. I was going to be staying in La Banda hostal where there would be other people my age who spoke my language and good food with mojihitos. This thought drove my decrepit left leg in front of my right all the way to the station and within half an hour I was into Sevilla.

Cordoba

My first night in Cordoba was spent in a Medieval guest house ran by a softly spoken German woman called Carola. I had to cut my walk that day slightly short as I had to arrive at the guest house in the morning as Carola had a wedding in Cadiz in the afternoon. I walked through a lush park, down the main highstreet which opened into a huge plaza and then right through various streets until I came to the small ally which the guesthouse backed onto. After trying various bells, I found the right one and Carola came and opened the gate, with the languid stride of someone walking through an allotment. 'Tonight you are going to be sleeping in a Medieval house' she explained as she led me through into a beautifully lit patio with great potted plants and covered areas with seating. We climbed a flight of narrow, steep wooden stairs to a small bedroom with a low ceiling, and, low and behold, a kettle! My first in kettle in Spain, the possibilities seemed endless. 

Carola reappeared later in sandals and definitely bra less under her matching orange tshirt and 3/4 lengths get up. She smiled bashfully and towel dried her short greying hair as I left, map in hand, with a whole afternoon ahead of me for sightseeing. 

I walked around the town for hours, submerging into the torrent of tourists and then escaping into a juice bar where I had an amazing salad with oregano and feta cheese. The owner was a woman with dark haired arms and two little girls who scrambled around her feet with a dog. Her partner sat outside with a cigarette, his teeth as dark as her arms, which on an English man would have looked awful but they were rather flattering on him. 

When I returned to the house I met Denise, a middle-aged Californian work away with thick silvery tresses which she could wind and coil to her hearts content. It was her last week in Cordoba before she travelled north to see some more of Spain and then she was planning on going to Ecuador for three months. She was very petite, with a heart shaped face now I think of it, and she carried around a jar of water with slices of lemons in. After talking for some time we went to get a slice of potatoe omelette together and then went to the cinema for 95 cents and watched Much Ado About Nothing. We crossed the Roman bridge over the river to get a better look at Cordoba lit up at night and came across an amatuer flamenco show which was being held in protest against the local community centre being shut down. It turned out that Denise, as I had suspected, was an all out hippie chick; married at 17 and went to live in a commune in India with her two babbies and husband when she was twenty one. Since then however, she hadn't really had the chance to travel much, and so with no job and the kids all grown with families of their own, she had decided to return to the land of her Spanish ancestors.

The next day I rose early in order to get into the Mezquita for free. It was absolutely beautiful, the golds and the blues were like a relief from the Cordoban heat and everything was silent, finally. Apart from my stomach. Hemingway said one can only truly appreciate art on an empty stomach but then if I smoked and drank as much as he did I don't think I'd feel like eating either. And so, reluctantly, my hunger frog marched me out of the Mezquita and I had tomatoe on toast served by a woman who looked at me like I was some tight fisted barnacle for wanting tap water not coffee. I returned to Carola's sanctuary, which I was having to leave for some accommodation which I had booked but had had received no information about from its host. The afternoon was passing by and I was slightly worried because all of the hostals were full as it was the festival of the patios in Cordoba. Denise and I went back to the house she shared with the other work away for a brainstorm and one of her ecaudorian chocolate ice creams. The house smelt of stone and faintly spicy, with high ceilings and a riddling layout of rooms at different levels. There was also a proper fly infestation problem; they were everywhere, sitting on the walls and waiting, not the really disgusting kind that go for poo but the sort that magically appear if you've left your uneaten take away out for a couple of days. The girls had stuck up long strips of dangling tape to combat the problem but these seemed to catch Denise more successfully than the flys. We decided that I could sleep on the sofa in the flat, which didn't look so bad after pounding out its lumps and brushing off the flys. I was thirty euros down from paying for a room which  I wasn't going to stay in but I didn't really mind. With all my worries put to bed (aha) I returned to the juice bar for another salad, sandwich and juice meal deal and Denise went to welcome some guests.

In Cordoba my spending spiraled out of control slightly. I'm not really sure why, I am susceptible to 'treating' myself for no particular reason other than I managed to wake up and get dressed all by myself. Well done. As I ate my lunch I started to receive really strange messages with strings of numbers from Roberto, the guy who was supposed to be renting out his room to me. Eventually he called me and instructed me, rather aggressively, to meet him in this square I'd never heard of. I kept asking him to write me the address which he wouldn't do and he was generally treating me like I was an inconvenience rather than a guest. After an hour or so he decided to meet me where I was, so I collected my bag at Carola's and returned to the juice bar where I met Roberto, in all his agro glory. I think a combination of Napoleon syndrome and early onset balding had contributed to his countenance, and as he marched me to the flat in the midday heat I also discovered that he was a complete cowboy and racist. With this in mind, my expectations for my accomodation was fairly low. He also told me I would be sharing the flat with a couple who were leaving the next day and perhaps I could have a beer with them. He made to leave almost as soon as we entered the place and as he said goodbye he took off the sporty sunglasses he had been donning the entire time. Nature had not been particularly kind to Roberto, his eyebrows were a different color to what little head hair he had left, and he would almost have had my sympathies if he hadn't texted me ten minutes after leaving asking me to leave the money in the flat for him. 

I went to the supermarket to buy my food for walking on Monday and took it back to the flat. The potential beer with the couple didn't seem likely; they hardly said hello and spoke only in whispers to one another apart from when the guy was in the shower when he would sing really passionately. Entirely odd. I left the flat and went to the cinema again and watched a film set in ww2 England which was for the most part pretty slow until the end when the family relocated to somewhere on the Thames because their house had been bombed out. It reminded me of home and summer and scones whilst watching Wimbledon and as the credits rolled I was a nostalgic wreck. I went to see Denise and we went out for ice cream and walked around the town until we found a concert hall where a pop group were playing, so we sat outside with everyone else who couldn't get tickets and listened. 

The next day I left the flat early and went for breakfast at the local. I decided I wanted to go and see the synagogue but ended up queuing for the Alcazar by mistake. It was beautiful inside though, so so many plants and fountains and lots of the lemons on the ground which I picked up to make lemonade with later. I went to meet Denise and took her to the juice bar for lunch where I talked to the guy about his music and watched a double wedding party drive by. We went back to Denise's afterwards and planned her trip to the North of Spain, which she would start the next weekend. I felt like a bit of an oracle and insisted that she went to Segovia and tried to some of the Camino. After a long siesta we decided to celebrate my last night with desert at a restaurant owned by this guy Denise really fancied but, as it turns out, was going out with her Spanish tutor. Me and Denise talked just as much as we ate and I probed her on her alternative lifestyle and tried to process and digest everything at the same time. The desert in the wine glass was amazing, caramel and cinnamon heaven sent wonder and afterwards we walked it off to the community centre and then back towards the Mezquita. 

Back home everyone seems to talk about the future and dream about how they want to live their life but here I'm meeting people who are actually just doing it. University still seems like this safe option even though I know I really want to go, sometimes I can't stand the thought of it and other times I think I just want to do degrees for a decade and then be a dusty old proffessor. I'm starting to realize that everything, in some way, is a bubble. A nine till five job, university, family, school, friends etc I understood for sure, but I know now that to think traveling is an escape from the bubble is wrong. Traveling is a bubble, a really nice Lenor one, where you get to be at your most free moving and passionate and have deep conversations with relative strangers because your this high ball of emotions and experiences. I know now the difference between inspiration and enlightenment, and I think a lot of people travel to become 'enlightened' when in fact, travel alone can only inspire. It's when you go back to reality, the bubble you call home, with all it's mundanity, I think thats where you'll find enlightenment. I don't fully understand the concept of enlightenment yet, I'm just very certain that it's different from inspiration. I also realize that this whole argument is rather tenuously linked by a general cynicism and, as yet, is without conclusion.

I said my farewells to Denise after a few beers and returned to the flat where I found a note from Roberto asking for his money. I didn't sleep a wink that night, imagining him coming to the flat with a couple of bailiffs for my money belt. I missed Denise terribly and fled Cordoba with €30 on my head.