Remains of the Badajoz city wall
The plan was for my final stint in Spain to end with an emotional experience that would rectify all of the dissonance I felt for the previous three weeks. In Spain, at this point, I had seen massive cities, mountain-side towns, mosques, cathedrals, forests, rivers, lakes, and everything in between. The one thing I had not experienced was making a new Spanish friend. I did not even bother quantifying this in any other destinations I visited at this point because… well, I easily made new friends in every other country. I’m not talking about people in the hostel. I’m talking about going out and meeting locals and having a real chat: whether at the pub, the club, on a walking tour (yes, locals do walking tours), chatting up someone on the beach, or going on a date, I was able to meet locals. In Spain, I was not.
I arrived at the pension and the door was locked. I called the phone number and a lady picked up who told me she was having a sandwich and she’ll be there in about 15 minutes. I told her not to rush. She came soon enough. The whole neighborhood felt eerie. There were signs for stores everywhere and some had tables setup outside for a coffee but there were no people anywhere.
Badajoz citadel
Badajoz is famous for having the largest Muslim-era citadel still in existence. They seem to have received significant EU funding for their massive sports recreation center, upgrading of plazas with water fountains and public art and for lighting up architectural highlights of the city with mood lighting at night. I wandered around the the town my first afternoon hoping to find a local place to eat where maybe I could have a casual chat with a worker. The problem was: everything was closed. I ended up at a pasta chain restaurant.
View of aqueduct from atop citadel
By the time the restaurants opened for dinner, the cafes and tapas joints were all filled with cigarette-smoking and drinking grandmas and grandpas. All of the outdoor seating was filled. Folks were relaxing quite comfortably. I peaked my head into a few places to see if there was room for me and looked at the menus for some decent prices or interesting fare. I could not find any. I also noticed that almost nobody was actually eating any food. Everyone was just smoking and drinking, so I couldn’t judge if the restaurant prepared food well by looking at the tapas on their plates. This plan to find some connection with Spain was really not working.
In an effort to lessen my luggage load, I sent home some massive amount of luggage back in Malaysia including my beard trimmer. I stopped trimming my beard and then in Zagreb, I decided to buy tiny scissors to manage the beard growth. By the time I was in Badajoz, the beard trimming via scissor plan had failed and I knew I needed a beard trimmer. I made my way into the final ubiquitous Corto Ingles department store I would see and I got myself a trimmer.
Restored walls of the citadel
The next day, I realized I had seen everything there was to see in Badajoz and I should not force myself to try to find new things. It was so hot outside, it would be better to find a place to relax and cool off. When I went downstairs in the morning, I asked the worker at the pension if there was a pool to swim in the town, knowing very well that Spanish cities all have beautiful pools they call piscina municipal. She tried to write something down on a sheet of paper for me to tell me where to go, after I asked her if there was a piscina municipal and she said no. She wrote “Ranadilla”, which I Googled the hell out of but nothing came up. After searching for a pool in Badajoz directly, I saw that the massive sports complex, the Polideportivo de Granadilla, had a massive outdoor swimming pool complex. This interaction was very confusing. Did she perhaps not know what this neighborhood was actually called? How could she forget the first letter? Was she drunk? Maybe she was nervous as she was writing it down for me because of my accented Spanish?
Closed or out of business stores during the day in Badajoz
Regardless, her attempt at recommendation was still a good one because the pool was incredible. Of course they sold beers and food there. There was a concrete area with lounge chairs and a natural grass lawn for those seeking something a little more natural to put their tuchus on. I bought a beer, found some shade on the grass and accepted my reality in Spain: I am not Spanish and they know it. Spain, unlike many other countries in Europe nowadays safe for Poland, does not appear to have a significant immigrant population. My accented Spanish and perhaps blue eyes make me stand out like a sore thumb to people who care about that sort of thing. When I bought my ticket to the pool, I was hoping to have a little chit-chat with the group of older local men who were selling tickets. They only asked me where I was from and when I said New York, the conversation was, again, immediately over. They asked me if I was Italian as a guess and I said no. My feelings were hurt. This was just like the experience with the security guard at the Granada train station. Was I supposed to make them feel better about their guess at my ethnicity so that we could have a more personal connection, even if it would have been fake? Was I supposed to tell them I am an Ashkenazi Jewish person? No way, I’m not interested in what they have to say about that. It’s also way too personal for me to share something like that with complete strangers.
Polideportivo La Granadilla, Badajoz
I sipped my beer and let go of my Spanish experience. I realized that all of the beauty in the world could not cure me of the loneliness I was feeling. Spain was supposed to help me process my experience in Poland. Instead, it added another level of experiences to process! This is not necessarily a bad thing. I just thought that somewhere in Spain, I would feel a little piece of home, and, unfortunately, I did not feel it anywhere. I would head to Lisbon thinking that my Portuguese experience would be similar to my Spanish experience, but maybe better only because it was with friends. I would come to learn that Portuguese culture and Spanish culture have less in common than I thought.