As I mentioned in the last posting (before Michiel’s shameless plug for birthday wishes for me), our fourth volunteer gig was at a Bed and Breakfast in the center of the country. In Spain, rural guesthouses are known as “Casa Rurales” and are often very charming and restored old homes that may or may not serve breakfast as part of the price of lodging.
We travelled from Asturias by bus and crossed over the Cantabrian mountain range, which made for a tremendously gorgeous trip until we hit the high plateau that makes up the bulk of Spain’s interior. This hot and dusty plain is almost completely devoid of people as Spaniards have traditionally chosen to live in town groups where there was water. The rural farmhouse is not a phenomenon that is known anywhere else but Galicia (in the northwest) and Andalucia (in the south). For purposes of water, companionship and shelter from the roaring winter winds, much of the rural dwellers in the center of Spain live in small, sad-looking towns dotting the map. These towns have become all but abandoned as the young figure out that life is far more interesting in the city and never return to their village. As you drive through these small outposts, you see only some old people sitting on a lawn chair next to their front door; underfed, barking dogs and some cats.
In between these fountains of joy are dry fields of sunflowers. Spaniards are crazy about sunflower seeds. They bring their own bags of them – roasted and salted – to the terraces of their local bar and make piles of shells under their tables. It made perfect sense to us to see all these fields after our encounters with sunflower chomping enthusiasts.
To add to our increasing sense of entering the desert, the mild Asturian temperatures gave way to the blazing hot climes of central Spain that we had been trying to avoid. We arrived in our town with temps over 90 F (32C) and discovered that there was no one to pick us up. We had arrived late and we later learned that our hostess didn’t have a car. The taxi drivers refused to drive us to our destination but with our less-than-stellar Spanish, we weren’t exactly sure why. A friendly on-looker told us how to walk to our destination, “at the end of this block go up and keep going up" (“
arriba, arriba, arriba!”). Damn! We aren’t exactly travelling light but we had no other option so we got on the big packs, strapped the day packs to our front side and hobbled up the ridiculously steep slope.
The height of the B&B above the not-so-attractive town was a definite plus later, but at that moment, I cursed every step. We eventually found our hostess and from that first moment discovered what she was like. The words spewed forth like a fire hydrant (which was lucky since I could barely breathe from the hill-climb and the heat), “
I was so worried. I called my friend the bar owner to come look for you. I called my friend the shop owner to fetch you, but you’re so late,” etc, etc.
The talking didn’t stop all evening, nor did the name-dropping (“
my friend, the ambassador/minister of” such-and so or “
my bosom pal, the owner of a very successful company”) or the topic-jumping. It was tiring for me but utterly exhausting for Michiel, whose motto is "speech is silver and silence is golden". In fact, the talking didn’t stop at all during those two weeks, whether she was talking about how advanced the Chinese are or how great the Lebanese cuisine is (“
far superior to modern Israeli cuisine, which has just stolen Lebanese dishes”) or how much better men are than women in spatial orientation or how those poor Kurds are struggling. She actually said more than once, “
I downloaded Kurdistan on the internet.”
The first couple of days I was utterly irritated by her inability to listen to anyone; her insistence in swooping in on any task I was doing, taking it over for 5 minutes and then dropping it to do something else (she had the attention span of a fly); and her completely old-fashioned ideas about the roles of men and women. She seemed to only ask us questions about subjects that she wanted to talk about but never waited for our answers. After about three days of listening to her, I realized that if I just laughed at what she said, she would continue gleefully and I could manage not to go bonkers. The real turning point in my dealings with her occurred when I gained empathy for the impossible family drama occurring in her household and how devastating it was to our hostess.
We met our host’s daughter soon after arriving. She was the total opposite of her mother: gruff, unworldly, crass, chain-smoking, and shabbily dressed. She sauntered into the kitchen at 1:30 pm after just arising from bed and would plunk down at the table waiting for food. Then the yelling would start. Our host would begin with “
you can’t just show up here expecting food without helping to set the table”, then the daughter would turn into Regan from the Exorcist, “
why are you always #$^*&$ing on my case!” and so on. “
My daughter has some mental and physical problems,” she told us later. And so it went…we had landed in the middle of a loony bin with two co-dependent family members: an adult daughter with no ability to control herself (including a suspected drinking problem) and a completely resentful mother who'd lost two husbands and now put aside all her dreams in order to "care for" this ungrateful and belligerent daughter.
Michiel did his best to keep his head down, work hard (especially if it meant picking and eating mulberries) and not be in the house. Since I was expected to be a “daughter of the house” (which is exactly how my duties were described to me in advance), I couldn’t escape. I was responsible for serving breakfast to guests (the daughter was conveniently sleeping when they were around) and cleaning rooms, as well as some cooking and other tidying up tasks.
We survived it by reminding ourselves that our situation could make good fodder for a future book. Furthermore, along this journey we've come to grips with the fact that even bad situations have good aspects - in this case, international cuisine, great location and whole wheat bread with sesame seeds (you scoff, but it is nearly impossible to find good bread in Spain). We even got some interesting advice from our host about possible places to search for a place to live. The question for us is always whether the good aspects outweigh the bad and whether we have other options in an area we want to explore. Sometimes schedules (the hosts' or ours) and money concerns simply don't allow for us to move on as soon as we'd like. It's character building (and we always have the blog to vent!)
Calderillo (pork stew) Fiesta
One of the oldest bullrings in Spain. We opted not to attend a bullfight, though I was sort of interested. We were advised that the amateurs in this town would make it more of a bloody mess than an artistic pursuit
Inside the bullring
View of/from the city's old walls
View from the Bed and Breakfast
