Winter. Part II

otherwise known as:

My Grand Return to Spain


Barcelona was my last visit when I left Europe two and a half years ago, and so it was perfectly appropriate that it be my first holiday from France. Something kind of poetic and perfect.

I sort of figured that when I saw my spanish friends for the first time after almost three years of separation that, for a moment at least, the world would stop turning, birds would fall from the sky, that the lights lining the streets would buzz as they flickered brighter and brighter and that finely-tuned meteorological instruments would be thrown off their charts.
I expected something huge; an explosive moment, or a burst of energy and light in some swirling, truly cinematic way.
But that's never really what happens, is it?
I watch too many movies.

There were however, yells of joy, running, hugging, kisses on faces, and amazing smiles. And I got something better than some high-impact moment that would burst through train stations and town squares and then dissipate. I got so much more.

After the greetings and the hugs came conversations and walks and dreams, and among all of this, I found a part of myself. A part that maybe I lost three years ago when I left Spain that was just waiting for me to come back and reclaim it. A part that maybe I had just drowned out with grey moods, hip attitudes and lost causes. But here, in the land of palm trees and torros is life and wine and love. Here in Spain, surrounded by people who are so alive – people with plans – people who aren't just sitting and talking about doing something, but actually going out and doing it, jumping feet-first and seeing where they land – I remembered that I have ambitions. I used to DO. I used to create.

It's taking some time to re-integrate this part of me, but slowly I'm moving towards creative productivity, and it feels like finally, I am home again.

And of course, it wasn't just seeing my Spanish friends, but also seeing friends from Montana that I hadn't seen for at least a year as well that made the holiday more magical than any sort of sweeping movie moment.


Sitting in cafes in one of the world's great tourist destinations, I felt so terribly at home, so wonderfully back in Bozeman. Sam, Ben and I had all been living with and around each other for four years, and Katie Kosaya had so quickly become one of the group in Bozeman that she might as well have been with us from the very beginning. Reuniting in Barcelona was amazing. We wandered through the streets, planned new adventures and caught up on a year's worth of stories and dreams.

Between Barcelona, Valencia and Bozeman... I could not have asked for a better christmas holiday, for a better gift.
For my friends.




















So, now that it has taken me a whole month and a half to actually finish this post, I am publishing it from my friend's home in Latvia... my latest adventure!

With any luck, it will only take me a month to write about this one... haha

Winter. Part I

The holiday season was insanely busy and beautifully crazy and tragic and wonderful, and in the middle of it all, i completely neglected my blogging (surprise, surprise).

First of all, the most lovely and amazing Samantha came to visit me, freshly released from her contract teaching English in Korea. It had been more than a year since we'd seen each other and i could hardly contain my excitement. I was in fact, so excited that I sang about it.






Yeah, I am a huge loser.
This we know.

Being reunited with my Sam was marvelous, and she was one heck of a trooper. She arrived from three days of traveling halfway across the world in buses, planes and trains and I threw head first into a mexican dinner with about 8 frenchies and all of the sudden, not only was she jet-lagged and forced to sociable, but she also had to deal with a lot of language.
I gave the precursory tour of Nantes. We went out with my friends. We tried to catch up on a year worth of stories and gossip and hugs. That poor girl drank an entire glass of pastisse (a naaasty licorice-flavored concoction) because in Korea it is rude to not accept a drink or food that is offered to you. In France it is not rude. In France it is perfectly normal. It was even offered to her with a "you can try this if you want, but if you don't like it, just give it to me and I can drink it." But she didn't believe them I guess.
Poor, poor thing.



(photo courtesy of samantha panger)



I played a song to make her feel better. I am like the pied-piper of happiness.

Then she let me drag her to Rennes (Rennes, the city of my dreams... and my former study abroad home-base) so that I could meet up with my friend Maïwenn, who I hadn't seen since I left France 3 years ago. Rennes was, as always, perfectly magical. We ate gallettes at the market, drank a café and enjoyed wine and cheese in one of my old haunts. We spent the afternoon wandering through the winding cobblestone streets and stumbling upon a tacky, blaring neon fair.
In true Rennes fashion, there was a loud demonstration of crusty punks and hippies who were protesting a new law calling for the ban of "ephemeral housing" (a very shite law, truth be told. Look it up.) by crashing what was supposed to be a visual presentation in front of the town hall and lighting a bunch of crates on fire while blasting aggressive trance music.
There were fire-dancers.
I LOVE fire dancers.




(photo courtesy of samantha panger)



I was more than happy to join their numbers, until the municipal police showed up and starting telling the gathering crowd of parents and children who had come to see the now-interrupted presentation that anyone with children needed to leave. Nay, not just leave, but to "get as far away as possible."
I turned to Sam and said, "we need to leave.Now." When she asked why, I asked her if she remembered the G.I. Joe SWAT teamsters that we saw gearing up a few blocks away. "That's why."
According to the paper the next morning, the team showed up minutes later and fired tear gas into the crowd.
I'm not that sorry that we missed it.
Especially because as we were wandering the streets, killing time until our rendez-vous with Maïwenn, we heard the beautiful sound of accordion music echoing through the streets, and followed it to find the most beautiful young punk playing Yann Tiersen songs. I gave him money and some day Samantha is going to find him and marry him. We will live across the street from each other and her beautiful, musically inclined new husband will teach me how to play the accordion while Sam and I make movies together.
It is a fool-proof plan.

Finally, we met up with Maïwenn, had a drink, and an excellent dinner in a Lebanese restaurant, and then she was kind enough to drive us to the train station where we were to catch a 10o'clock train back to Nantes.
Well, we were lucky that she drove us, because due to my being an absolute idiot, there was in fact, no train, and so, instead of leaving us to sleep in front of the train station all night, Maïwenn invited us to stay with her at her sister's home. Her sister and her brother-in-law were not only amazingly hospitable, but really really cool.
They stayed up with us into the wee-hours drinking tea and talking about music and film, they shared some 20 year-old Calvados that his father had made on their farm in Britany, and in the morning, we got to eat breakfast with their beautiful daughters. (The youngest is two and she is ADORABLE)
Sam pointed out that ALL European children have the same high-pitched little voice, and it makes your heart melt. It's wonderful.


So a day later than planned, we made it back to Nantes, went to visit the Machines of the Island (see previous posts) and packed for our Big Spanish Adventure.


Also, just in case you're curious, here is the video of Nantes that I made for my family at christmas. It's like a shaky, fast-paced walking tour.