Not welcome

13 – Holla, the forest fairy

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Tuesday, July 29th: Two days to go. We try to go to the Altamira caves again, but it is packed with people, we don’t even get a parking spot and people are in a queue outside the building. We decide to skip it then. Another idea was Bilbao, but we are not really in the mood for another long car ride. So we look around in the area again. My husband finds La Fuentona de Ruente which looks nice and sounds nice, and it is. When we get out of the car, first thing we see is a black cat, so we must be in the right place. We take a walk around a little park and see the cave from where the water goes into the river. If I understand correctly, there is a fairy living in that cave. It looks pretty enchanted, so I better not question it.

The little village next to it looks like a place from a fairy tale or at least from times long ago. I see a man in traditional wooden shoes and a woman in a house grown over from plants, but I don’t dare to take pictures. It’s very peaceful here.

Only the restaurant across the street shows that this is, indeed, a tourist hot spot. It’s full with tourists already and the waitress is not really friendly. She tells us something like we would have to wait a long time for our food if there was any left. Okay then, no business here as well. We are getting used to it.

Next stop is Comillas, very beautiful with a beautiful beach. We take a little walk and then try to find a little snack in the city.

What a stunning view!

In the town centre we witness someone blocking a street and causing a traffic jam. Purpose, stubbornness, stupidity? Who knows. Suddenly, a man gets out of one of the waiting cars and giving the driver a piece of his mind. Not in any way violent, but with veeeery strong language that even we did clearly understand. He smiles at the driver when he goes back to his own car and the jam dissolves. I’ll keep that strategy in mind. Might be coming in handy in France on the way home. Or in Wolfsburg at rush hour. To our surprise (or maybe not), we don’t find any place to eat in the city. So we go back to Santander and plan on buying something to cook in a supermarket. We also need soap bubbles for the concert and some snacks for the time we will wait. There’s a big mall on the way where we should be able to buy everything we need. What we didn’t know is that there are also limitations on parking grounds. So the mall is not accessible for us because Grrrmaneta is too high again. We find another supermarket near the mall and get everything we need there. Except for the bubbles, but like with the posters, the lovely Bogofans will help us with this.

When we get back to the camp ground, we are shocked: The French guests from one of the other houses took Grrrmaneta’s parking spot. Her fanclub is outraged when I tell them. So are we. The phrase „La puta Francia“ is now part of everyone’s vocabulary in the family. We work on plans how to get that spot back. Meanwhile we are listening to some good music on the porch of our little house after the kids found their small Bluetooth speaker in their bag. The kids also have a new game to play: It’s called „Ultraligera live“. K2 climbs on the porch rail and jumps down while K1 is filming this weird spectacle and cheering him on. I can’t deny they’re mine with crazy ideas on their minds like this.

After all this excitement my husband is cooking paella again. Served with some of the putas estrellas and I don’t feel like a German tourist any longer.

8 – The dream I did not know I had

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Friday, July 25th: After that very eventful night we get up, pack our things and I go to the carpark to pick up our supposedly ruined Grrrmaneta. Two days with all this damp equipment and stuff inside. The smell will be heavenly. Not.

To my surprise it’s not that bad. I pay the ticket and find a spot right in front of the hostal. I even have perfect change for the ticket! We restore Grrrmaneta and take off. Of course not before we give her a little upgrade from the shop at the basilica.

Because we are already close to it, we circle the HdS monument. There’s no parking space there so we just take a quick picture while waiting on the traffic lights. I promise to pay it a proper visit in a few weeks.

We try to get something to eat on the way. We’re passing something that looks like a big mall outside town, but when we get closer, it’s very rundown and big parts are closed. At least one of the fast food places is still open. We get inside and order. They have Gazpacho, I need to try it – and it’s fantastic! I think my transformation is nearly done. I may be a cheesy white and chubby Aleman chick now, but I am convinced that I must have been a fiery Spanish girl in another life. But obviously I did something bad to deserve this existence, maybe I invented reggaeton and deserved to get expelled from paradise, I don’t know. But speaking of expelled, this place gives horror movie beginnings vibes. And as we spot the monorail, we pack up and leave Kamp Krusty before more unpleasant Simpsons innuendos are coming to mind.

On the way to Madrid I start crying. Suddenly it hit me that this was a dream I always had, but never knew about. Driving through Spain, visit places and see things I had only read about or seen on pictures. I’ve been in love with Héroes del Silencio since 1994 or even earlier, before I even knew their name, but it’s Arde Bogotá who made this dream possible. I’m awfully sentimental about this topic, I know. But it means so damn much to me to be here. And that I am still here is something I owe to these two bands. Their work has put me back on my feet, gave me a pat on the back and turned on the light when everything around me was dark. I don’t expect anyone to understand this who hasn’t experienced something similar, but I know there are people outside who did, one way or another. So, if you’re reading this and feeling something similar, remember: La derrota no es una opción!

The trip to Madrid is spectacular – the landscape changing from one thing into the next from one moment to the next. Others may want to cruise the world on one of these swimming cities, let them do it, but it’s not for me. I am right now, right here in the right place. And there’s another week’s adventure waiting for us.

By now everyone gets excited about seeing signs with A-3 on it.

Our place to stay for the next two days is an apartment in an office complex not too far from the city centre. We struggle with the door to the complex, but the concierge has a heart of gold and lets us in every time he sees us without questions asked. The door to the apartment works with an online key and I am impressed about this science fiction. What I am not impressed about is the balcony. We are on the fifth floor and you can see right through the ground? There’s also a little step at the door. So if you stand on solid ground, the rail is too low and you fear you might fall over it, but when you move to the place where the rail is fine, the ground opens up. Great for any kind of anxiety, I guess. I decide to put mine aside and stay away from this death trap.

Since we found a great parking spot right outside the door for Grrrmaneta, we take the bus into the city centre. There’s a bus that will take us nonstop to Plaza Picasso. What I didn’t know was that La Torre Picasso was so close to the Bernabéu stadium, in fact I did not know that such a big stadium was so close to everything.

There’s a playground right next to the building, the kids want to go there. We wonder about the parrots in the trees and look it up. Of course, that second K2 falls off the playground equipment, right on his face. Another mum and a grandpa from the bench next to us are rushing to the rescue. I try telling them thank you for being quicker than me, but they smile like „don’t worry, everything is fine, it did not cause any circumstances“. Nonverbal communication among parents is a very helpful thing when you don’t speak each other’s language.

Only on the way back to the apartment I get the feeling that tourists are not as welcome here as they are in Zaragoza for example. An old lady is sitting on the other side of the bus, obviously feeling disturbed by us speaking German and the kids being excited. They are not climbing the seats, they do not scream, they are just happy and talking. Whenever she looks at us, I try to make eyecontact and smile which works most of the time. But here – nothing. She clearly dislikes us. When we get off the bus, an older man takes our seat who was sitting somewhere else before and both of them start talking and look in our direction with quite a hateful stare. I feel stunned. This is the first time we met people who were clearly not pleased about us being here. It’s a very odd feeling, and I can’t say that I like it. It’s so very different to the feeling I had when we came here earlier today.