Apricot jam and overcast

Still few more images from that excursion to Chipiona last week.

***
It's a public holiday in here today, so I'm chilling at home. It seems a bit overcast, maybe it's a good day to grab my camera and take few pics. But first things first: it might be past breggie time but I'm still having my toast with olive oil, cheese and apricot jam. Mjam.

Getting started slowly today.

Greetings from the coast

Happy girl, lucky fish, smiley face. Greetings from the coast! More pics, here you go. Chipiona was little, hum, ghosty this time of the year but it suited me just fine -loved the ambandoned ambience and that murky twist the autumn breeze gave to the village.

Just one unpleasant thing: I fell on the street in Chipiona. I don't know how it happened, I guess I stumbled upon something, and soon enough I was on the ground. I got quite a bang on my head too when it hit the wall and things went dark for few seconds. I had time to think I'm too tired to get up, that I just want to lay still, but luckily that feeling went past rapidly and I was on my feet again. Afterwards I kept feeling a bit dizzy and now my knees are a nice combo of red, blue and yellow, my left wrist is a bit achy, I have a blue mark even on my shoulder (!) and the poor head of mine, well, something bit swallen in there, too. Oh well. Things happen and this was indeed unexpected. Walking is dangerous.

Out of town

Been outta town this week, first Monday and now for the past two days. Went down to Chipiona for work and decided to stay there over night too to avoid the two-hour ride back and forth between Sevilla and the coast. Was refreshing, litterally, to be on the coast -wind was blowing somewhat hard and the breaking waves were getting bigger, splashing tons of water on the beach-side walk and letting the moist and fizz fly around, even meters away.

Matkalaukkuelämää, taas

Hassua.

Parin viikon päästä palaan kolmatta kertaa paikkaan, jota en edes ollut ajatellut ennen kesäkuuta.

Sevilla.
Jokin selvästi vetää minua sinne takaisin. Ja hei! Minulla on suunnitelma koko ajalle!

Satunnaisia ajatuksia:
-Matkalaukkuelämä ei kai ole osaltani vieläkään loppumassa..
-En muuten ole ottanut yhtään kuvaa Sevillassa. Siinäkin on nyt järkeä.
-Hymyilyttää.
-Ja minua jännittää lähteminen enemmän kuin aikoihin. Sellaista positiivista jännitystä.
-Vastassa on haasteita.
-Tällä kertaa aion hankkia itselleni kunnon kartan. Sevilla = sokkelo.

(Kuvat Marokosta. Viime kesän kohokohta, ei epäilystäkään.)

***
Funny.

In few weeks I'll return to a place for the third time, a place I hadn't even thought of before June.

Sevilla.
Obviously something is drawing me towards the city. And hey! This time I got a plan for the whole stay!

Random thoughts:
-Living out of a bag doesn't seem to be over for me anytime soon..
-By the way I never took any photos in Sevilla. It also makes sense now.
-Feel like smiling.
-Also feeling a little nervous about leaving, haven't felt like this in a long while. But it's positive excitement.
-There will be challenges.
-This time I'll get myself a proper map of the city. Sevilla = maze.

(Pics from Morocco. The highlight of last summer, no doubt.)

Rest of spain

My plans were diminished to none by the time I left Nerja. I was taking a bus to Málaga but hadn't even decided if I wanted to stay there or move further down the coast straight away. I thought time would show -anyway I had almost a full hour to Málaga by bus.. Half way through something unexpectional happens: two of my friends from the beach jump on the bus! Can't believe it -they were supposed to be biking! In Málaga they solve my near future for me and I'm invited to stay over in an argentinian family with four children, a parrot, a kitten, a hamster. She is the oldest of the four and together with her boyfriend they're just simply awesome and so so lovable! The parrot entertains himself during the night by flying around and sitting on my bum, sitting on my head.

We also have a rendez-vous with Twin for some sun and pool time for couple of days and then I'm back to my argentinians to sip some mate-tea for another night. Thanks a million, muchas gracias!

I also hesitate with my next step: should I fly home to Finland, travel to Portugal, go back to Tarifa or visit some friends in Italy. Italy wins in the lottery.

No plans

My next stop was Nerja. It seemed somewhat popular but the crowds never stepped aside the main walk so I simply kept my routes off the other tourists. There were no backpackers around and once again I didn't have a plan for the night. So first things first then: you sit down for a drink, enjoy your free tapas and read your book for a while. Then one thing leads to another and you end up knocking a door and renting a tiny little room from a house that belongs to an old lady with impossible spanish accent.

Beach, books, swim, fruits. Spoil yourself with a delicious meal in an Indian restaurant, it is your birthday anyway, and wonder what does all these Indian eateries do in a little coastal town south of Spain -did they just pop up because you happened to dream of some good mattar paneers and kormas and naan breads? Spend a night at a wonderful little venue with moroccan inspired deco and Real Mint tea -was it there just to make you smile again?

Also, some lovely yoga at the beach. Once I'm done, I go to chat with a guy who's sitting there in the middle of backpacks and bikes. Soon his friends also show up. Turns out they're a group of youngsters from Málaga, most of them with Argentinian origins, and I end up spending the night with them on the beach. They've come from Málaga by bike and as I sit the evening by the little bonfire, I'm trying hard to make my Spanish work again. When I get back to my little room, I got the four elements in me: scent of fire from the bon, summery seaside wind in my hair, feeling the salty waters on my skin and earth in the form of grains of sand.

Airconditioning on, please

Once back in Spain, I stay overnight in cool Tarifa and plan to take a bus to Ronda. But I miss the only bus of the day and end up going back up to Sevilla -which is ever so hot that even the tought of it takes me out of breath. There are two things I need to re-adjust my system to after Morocco: being on my own again and swapping my French back into Spanish. In Sevilla, I decide to invest in myself. I book a yoga class. It is perfect, phenomenal, as if it had been designed for my needs on that day. The lady who takes it carries amazing energy in her. I walk back to my backpackers feeling great.

Then, back on the road again. Two minutes to ten I'm at the bus station, the bus leaves at ten. I'm one of the last to get onboard and I manage to find an empty seat. I sit next to a girl and we start chatting. She is from Taiwan, also going to Ronda. She has an overnight plan, I don't. We end up sharing a room. We pay for it and get the keys. Then a question comes to my mind: 'what's your name? I'm Martta.'

No need to say that Ronda was also burning hot.

Nothing's a coincidence

And then, just like that when you least expect it, the world around you reshapes everything so beautifully that you couldn't have imagined it any better.

I had gone to the beach after 8am for some yoga. There was no one else except the man cleaning up the beach, me with my yoga mat and those gigantic seagulls starting out their daily croaks. I did few rounds of sun salutation and some breathing but the wind was blowing so hard I cut my session off short and walked back to the backpackers, nicely in time for the free breakfast.

She had seen him the day before at the backpackers and she knew immediately she'd travel with him. Then she left to stay over at her couchsurfing spot and the two of them decided to hook up again the next day. That's why she came back that morning. But he was running late and instead of just coming and going, she ended up having a seat at the roof top terrasse of the backpackers while he went to pack his bags. I had just thrown my yoga mat back in the room and climbed up the stairs to get the breakfast. With my toast and a cup of tea, I happened to sit next to her. We start chatting and -litterally- ten minutes later the decision is made: we'd be going to Morocco together. The next day. She said he had been a bit iffy about the plan she had come up with but now that we were two anyway, he'd propably make up his mind and join us.

We change numbers, he shows up and off they go. We plan to meet up the next day in Tarifa. At that point I send a little facebook message to my mom. It is Tuesday. I tell her how Cadiz is lovely and how it's so much better to be on the coast. Then I write I'm going to Morocco on the following day with my traveling buddies. I list their nationalities and her name (I doubt I even knew his by the time) and inform my mother I would be back in Spain the following week Tuesday.

The next day I take a bus ride to Tarifa and meet up with the two again. He's filling in the forms for his Moroccan visa, she has already completed hers. I start to work on mine, checking her already completed form while I go. Name, nationality. Passport number, all the usual stuff. Date of birth. Something on her form catches my eye and I re-study it and, in amazement, I turn to her. Are you born on that day, that month, that year?? She gives me this yes-have-you-got-a-problem-with-that-face and I manage to pronounce so am I before we both burst out laughing. We're born on the exact same day!

Few hours later we -me, my newly found twin-sister and junior- are on a ferry to Morocco. It doesn't happen eveyday you click with people so well as the three of us did. But it might happen at a backpackers in southern Spain one morning because you finished off your yoga because of the wind, because she needed to come to pick him up, because he was running late. And so the conditions were ideal to formulate the best trio ever.

There are no coincidences she says. World's a funny place I say. He gives us a grin.

So, would you go to Morocco with strangers?

What happened

Joogasin rannalla, söin halvan voileivän, pesin hiukset. Matkustus oli jo minussa, olin jo sisällä reissussa, mikä käytännössä tarkoitti sitä etten ajatellut enää mihin seuraavaksi suuntaisin vaan elin sisällä siinä käsillä olevassa hetkessä. Oli rauhallinen olo./ Some yoga at the beach, cheap sandwich, washed my hair. The traveling was in me already, I was inside the trippin' mode, which ment I wasn't even thinking where I'd head next after Cadiz. I simply lived in the moment. I felt peacefull.

Down in Andalucía

No pictures from Sevilla. I really enjoyed it but it was so unbelievably hot in there that my brain was like toasted marshmallow. On top of the heat, the old town in all it's loveliness is the most confusing labyrinth I've ever been to and the map they've made out of it has hardly anything to do with the reality down on the streets. With my poor sense of orientation I got lost about three times a day. And not just little lost but like lost-lost, out-of-the-map-lost, ready-to-collapse-because-of-the-heat-lost. Still, I liked Sevilla very much indeed. And again, cool crowd in there to hang out with.

In few days I was in need of some fresh air though so jumped on a bus and went to the coast. Cádiz! The even more lovable Cádiz! Yesss.

Gloomy

It was raining when I left and it was early. I felt toxic, poisonous. Even the airport seemed gloomy like te city of Barcelona itself.

Forbidden

The worst was that the city didn't let me yoga. So I needed to get going.

La mani

Nowhere in Barcelona

Hyviäkin juttuja. Lähinnä tapaamieni ihmisten muodossa.

Muut sanoo: no se sun hostelli ei kyllä ole kauhean kivalla alueella.
Minä ajattelen: viihdyn siellä parhaiten.
Lähistöllä asuva sanoo: Tykkään olla täällä, tämä on Barcelonaa, mutta täällä ei ole mitään, tämä ei ole missään -tämä on kuin Pakistan!

***
Good things too. Mainly in the form of people I met.

Others say: well your hostel certainly isn't in a very nice area.
I think: I like it the best.
Someone living nearby says: I like it here, this is Barcelona but there's nothing in here, this is nowhere -it's like Pakistan!

Barcelona blues

Ihmisillä on eri makuja, tietenkin. Mutta sanotaan nyt heti alkuun, että minä en pitänyt Barcelonasta. En halunnut ensin edes kuvata. Liikaa väkeä, liikaa yritystä, tekemällä tehtyä ja teennäistä. Kallis. Huonot vibat. Synkkä.

''Ehkä mun sisäinen maailma on jo niin rikas, etten tarvi tällaisia ärsykkeitä.''

Sitten, onneksi, päädyin tähän pieneen kahvilaan. Se muutti mielialaa. En vieläkään pitänyt suuremmasta osasta Barcelonaa, mutta kannoin silti mukanani hyvää tuulta.


***
We all got different preferences, of course. But let me come clear straight away: I didn't like Barcelona. First, I didn't even want to photograph. Too crowded, too done and artificial in it's festivities. Expensive. Bad vibes. Somehow depressing.

''Maybe my interior world is already rich enough so I don't need this sort of stimulus.''

Then, luckily, I ended up to this little coffee shop. It changed my mood. I still didn't enjoy the most of Barcelona but I carried some cheerfullness with me, anyway.

World takes you to places

I left with a vague idea of going to Spain, checking out Barcelona and then maybe  heading south to find a room to rent and some odd jobs, all this in an effort to work on my Spanish. Things turned out quite differently. Then, exactly 8 weeks later, I was back in Finland. That was this week Monday.

What follows now is a travel account, covering 8 weeks of improvised moves. All I can say for now that it has been a truly amazing summer and I am grateful. Thank you universe!

***
Lähdin Espanjaan ajatuksena katsastaa Barcelona, sitten mahdollisesti suunnata etelämmäksi, etsiä kämppä ja jotain kesätöitä, sillä tahdoin työstää espanjan kielitaitoani. Mitä sitten itseasiassa tapahtui onkin aivan toinen tarina. Sitten, tasan kahdeksan viikkoa lähtöpäivästä, olin takaisin Suomessa. Se oli tämän viikon maanantaina.

Seuraavaksi jonkinlainen matkakertomus, joka kattaa 8 viikkoa improvisoituja liikkeitä. En pysty sanomaan muuta kuin että tämä kesä on ollut aiva mielettömän upea ja olen siitä kiitollinen. Thank you universe!

Plan A starts with B

So plan A it is. I'm heading to Barcelona before the turn of the month.
***
Suunnitelma A lukittu. Lähden Barcelonaan ennen kuun vaihdetta.

Jesús Chacón Photography

detrás de ti from JESUS CHACON on Vimeo.

Although on holiday, I did actually do something for school as well. It was such a pleasure though, that it didn't feel like work: I visited Jesús Chacón, a spanish photographer, at his studio in Marbella and had a chat with him (I'm writing up an interview about him and his work for a school project). Not only does he take amazing photographs, he has also started to shoot films such as the music video above (Zuri -Detrás de ti). He enjoys to work with the world of music and fashion, but is yet down to earth. What a sweetie! I'm impressed.

Visit his web site for more.

All images above by Jesús Chacón.