Day 34-35: Granada

Left Sevilla and went to Granada by train. Didn’t buy a ticket for this train ride and ended up having to buy one on board that cost 5 euros more. Oh well, you lose some, you gain some, I guess. My net balance from RENFE is still positive :)

Arrived in Granada in the afternoon and checked into the hostel. Hostels in Europe are all pretty good, actually. They’re clean, comfortable, cosy and have this built-in friendly atmosphere that allows you to make friends. But I was feeling pretty unfriendly and loner-ish during my stay in the Granado hostel, so I kept to myself mostly. Sometimes I find myself getting sian of making small talk with people at the hostel, only to just leave a few days later. That’s the biggest difference with couchsurfing I guess. Through couchsurfing, I feel like I’m building a friendship, but staying at a hostel, it feels like just passing through. Its true that sometimes such encounters lead to good times, like in the hostel at Sevilla, but right now, I just need to be by myself, quiet and alone. I need to regain the feeling of independence and freedom that propelled me to travel alone on this trip in the first place.

Woke up early the next morning to queue for tickets at the Alhambra, Spain’s most visited tourist destination, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an attraction that had its tickets for the next two weeks sold out online, the last stronghold of the Moorish before they were driven by the Christians from the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquest. Everyone I’ve met who’s been there, every review I read online, all pointed to an amazing, almost life-changing place. It was even described as “on par” with the 7 wonders of the world.

Well, its not. Actually I preferred the Alcazar in Sevilla, which was free-of-charge for students (Alhambra had a 12 euro admission fee) and didn’t require any queuing. Sure, the Alhambra is beautiful, and has a great view, but it stops there. Sevilla’s Alcazar is lavish, grand and jaw-dropping in its intricacy and beauty. The Alhambra feels like a disjointed public park of sorts, with no interconnectivity between the buildings, one moment you’re in a paid area and the next you’re walking through what looks like a modern thoroughfare lined with souveniour shops and then you suddenly come to an old building again, before finding yourself in a garden of sorts that looked like it could have been built anytime between the 12th century and today, such was its "timeless” look. Really, the Alcazar was better, and the Alhambra somewhat disappointing.

Anyway, I got there at quarter to 7 when it was still 7 degrees celsius at dusk and whiled the almost 2-hour queue by talking to a fellow traveller from Brazil. She’s taking a semester abroad in Madrid (a lot of the people I meet on this trip are actually doing that, tons of Americans especially studying in Spain, and like what they say about Americans, you can hear them before you see them). Learnt quite a bit about Brazil and Spain in general.

Do you know something? I haven’t actually tried tapas in Spain. Yeah, I know, how can you come to Spain and NOT try tapas? Well, it just seems like a big gimmick to me and I just don’t have any urge to try it. Maybe next time I will, but at the moment, really, I don’t want to. Not that its expensive or what (it is, but I can definitely afford it). Tapas has a nice-sounding ring to it (“lets go for some tapas!”, sounds cool doesn’t it?) but its actually, from what I’ve seen and heard, just a small plate of some raw olives or boiled prawns or whatever to go with your alcoholic beverage. The most ridiculous thing is that you have to pay through your nose for this measly portion, which often comes up to the price of 3 plates of chicken rice (tapas is free in Granada though). The thing about European food, and I’m not being inward-looking or “backward” or whatever, is that its so undeveloped. Asian food is way way way better than European food, in terms of complexity of flavour. It is immediately obvious how more refined our cuisine is, how much more savoury and delicious it is, and how much more variety there is. Asian food is more exquisite but less exclusive, uses more spices, requires more time to prepare, and is more affordable. Singapore has a mind-boggling plethora of good food, while Spain is famous for… olives on a plate called tapas (3 euros please, and another 2 euros for the beer). So what if ‘tapas’ sounds nicer than ‘chicken rice’. It isn’t simply a question of tastebuds, most Europeans I’ve met agree as well. Hahahaha, I think this trip is making me more defensive of Singapore, because as I learn more about Europe, I keep finding myself having to justify my country and our culture to people I meet on this trip.

Well, on this note, the Brazilian girl was in complete agreement. After denouncing the food and language of Spain (we are both appalled at how little English the Spanish people speak, and share the theory that they still cling on to former illusions of their grand national empire, thinking that Spanish is the most important language). Well, Spanish is definitely important, but because of how widely its spoken in Latin America, and not because of how important Spain is (Spain’s not really an important country at all nowadays). I’d rank Spanish as one of the major world languages, along with English, Mandarin and Arabic. The great thing about being Singaporean Chinese is that it immediately gives me a huge advantage in that I can speak two of these major languages.

Europeans are fiercely European, I’ve realised. They like to learn each other’s languages, and basically live in a world where there’s only other European countries. Cosmopolitan in that they readily embrace the ideas, cultures and languages of other European countries, but also un-globalised as compared to Singapore or other Asian countries in that they don’t look outside of Europe much. At least Spain doesn’t. Many Spanish I meet can speak French, German, Italian, Portugese, i.e. languages-that-used-to-be-important-200-years-ago, but they don’t know anything about Asia at all. We know much more about them than they know about us, which I think is definitely a pity.

After wandering through the Alhambra for a bit, the Brazilian girl was so tired that she fell asleep on a bench and I tried to pick myself up and went to explore the Albazyin, the old Arabic quarter. I had a pretty good time, actually, climbing the steep cobblestone streets and admiring the whitewashed Mediterranean houses. This area is authentically lived-in, and doesn’t feel like a Disney-Granada like so many old towns feel (especially those in Japan, with all the old houses converted to omiyage shops). In Spain, all the old buildings are actually lived in by residents, some of whom may not be very rich. I can’t tell for sure, but the people living in the Albazyin, a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Granada, don’t look like rich folk. A positive point in Spain’s favour is that it has managed to preserve so much of its heritage as it modernises. Take the old buildings for example. There are so many of them around even now, still lived-in by residents, and its a huge pity that China is demolishing so many of those as it rushes headlong into becoming a world power, as well as during the Cultural Revolution, absolutely one of the most horrible episodes in world history.