Success in silence

I spent a lot of the day alone today...after being spoiled the past two weeks with company. So is an adjustment for me...but I think I am figuring it out. 

I chose to go to Valencia because I was talking to one of Xavier's spanish professors and he said "you should definitely check out Valencia" after I explained the nature of my project to him. ...so here I am, not knowing as much as I should about this place but very excited to learn. One of the first things I was told was when the hostel was giving me a map of the town and the woman pointed to the big park and said "this used to be a river, now it is our giant park that leads to the ocean." So, naturally, I was intregued by this green space* and my first day here I set about seeing what I could learn from it. 

It was, to date, the best use of public space that I have seen thus far. Actually, overwhelmingly, Valencia understands public spaces. 

My walk from the hostel to the park took me through the city center, which gave me a throwback to last year's study abroad trip to Rome...it was Corpus Christi--its a Catholic holiday and people go absolutely crazy for it in some places (alternative title for this blog post: bitches love Corpus Christi). Last year, this holiday fell a little later in the month, but that was the day I was able to hear the Pope give mass at his church in Rome (not in the Vatican, in Rome)...it was very cool. Valencian celebrations included a parade of bizzare people in masks and lots of children dancing and an obeo like instrument playing the same tune. What appeared to be the bishop of Valencia came by on a horse, he said something and everyone cheered...crazy. 

weird mask people (these are like the statues, but there were also people dancing around dressed like this)

festive dancing people

The park was probably about 8km long from where it started (my walk was probably about at the half way point) and I'm realizing now I should have taken way more pictures to prove how great of a space this was! Trees. Trees everywhere! Fountains, futbol stadiums (i walked past three..all in use!!), two concert venues, an "alternative festival" that I walked around in for a bit, but it was very crowded. They even had representatives from Green Peace there!

So, yeah, this walk took up most of my day. I initially set out to find the beach, but found out that the beaches were off of the main path of the garden and my map wasn't loading well. So, because I had walked in the sun a little too long I decided to save the coast for another day. 

I also found this nice eliptical in the park that I played on until I rememebered I had like a five mile walk back to the hostel. 

However, at the end of my walk I was at the center of Valencia's art life:

it was a little expensive so I was skipping the culture, but note: very cool buildings, very pretty. much art. 

*Central Parkway in Cincinnati used to be a big Canal (hence why one side of it is refered to as Over the Rhine) but we decided to make it a giant road that split up the city. Come on guys!  

I was a little tired of my own thoughts when I got back because I hadn't talked to anyone else for more than ten seconds so when I got back to the hostel I took a quick nap because it was really really hot and I needed to turn off for a bit. Once I felt recharged my hostel roommates walked in, the two girls from Belgium and I asked if I could get dinner with them...success! They said yes!

We had a nice and interesting night together. Wandering around, drinking local sangria and trying to find tapas to eat! We ate outside on a barrel. It was unique. The street cleaner came by about 17 times while we were there--the street was super clean at the end of it. 

I decided to ask these two Beligan nurses Laura Ann and Anna, what there thoughts on the EU--seeing as they lived in the very center of all of the action. They said that they like that they are in it but they don't really care about the EU or its politics. They did have a lot to say about Beligium though, they were from the Dutch side and it was really interesting because they said that whenever they run into French speaking Beligians they just ask if they speak English and that is their common language. So there isn't a deep sense of pride in the country as a whole, its more by area. And apparently there is an area that no one else in Belgium understands (I'm only thinking of like deep Mississippi River people) and last week they had a patient from this reason who was trying to describe his problem and no one in the hospital could figure it out. So. That's what I got from them. They love being Belgian, they travel to get better weather, but they don't have any interest in moving around too much, they both said that they plan on staying in the area they were raised. I think they were great on the ground EU people who are a part of our generation. And nice roommates! 

At the end of the day I felt a lot better about traveling, after being spoiled for the past two weeks I was starting to finally open up!