A couple of outings in Spain

Interesting week this week. Out and about in Spain much more than usual.

Last Saturday, the Neighbourhood Association of our village, Culebrón, organised a coach trip to a couple of towns over the Murcia/Alicante border. We went to Cehegín and Bullas. As always with the neighbours, the vecinos, it's the human bit that makes it interesting. I'm not a particularly outgoing or effusive person, but that doesn't mean that, as we waited for the coach to arrive and as people drifted into the agreed setting-off point, there wasn't an awful lot of cheek-kissing, hearty handshakes, backslapping, and a general bonhomie that always makes me grin internally. We got to Cehegín and did our bits of wandering around, looking at museums and churches and whatnot, but the real focus of any outing with Spaniards is the meal. The restaurant that the organisers, María Luisa and Inma I think, had chosen in Bullas was absolutely cracking.

There was a busload of us, 50 plus people, and the meal was 30€, so not particularly expensive. I expected dead ordinary. Mass catering is mass catering, and banging out food always diminishes the quality but, to be honest, if I'd turned up as an individual diner and got the same food and the same service, I'd have been well pleased. There is no way that I would have got as much drink as we got as a group though. Ramón, alongside, kept asking me if I was thirsty, and, whatever the answer, he'd order up more beer or more wine. By the time the meal was coming to a close, the noise level had increased markedly, the jokes were more frequent and raucous, and that slight alcoholic haze settled gently over the coffee. Our visit to the wine museum may have lacked a little in formality, and the coach home was noisy.

On Wednesday two groups organised by the local town hall, the book club, I'm a member of, el Club de Lectura Maxi Banegas, and the Adult Education service had arranged a coach trip to Valencia for a presentation and question and answer session with a Spanish writer called Laura Ferrero. The greetings at the pickup point were much more "Good morning, how are you?" than back slapping and kisses. Once in Valencia we got a tour of the Library building, where the event was being held. It's an enormous, decommissioned or is that a deconsecrated monastery. Impressive building; not so impressive a tour. One of those tours loaded with dates and details and almost nothing interesting or entertaining even though the place itself had served as monastery, prison, library and conservation centre which must have produced any number of interesting tales. 

The session with the writer was good. Her presentation was brief but interesting and she answered the questions from the audience in a straightforward and succinct fashion. The talk done, it was meal time. This time the food was more what I'd expect of mass catering; it wasn't bad, it wasn't good. It was fine and it only cost 21€. The meal though was a completely different affair to the neighbourhood thing. I suppose the difference was that this was a more sober, educational visit with a specific purpose other than leisure but I suspect that the real difference was that there were far more Northern Europeans. The Adult Education people were generally people learning Spanish and we brought our Northern attitudes with us. It was still good fun though, as was the boat ride on the Albufera, a fresh water lagoon crammed with birdlife, which was how we topped off the day. The coach home was so quiet that I nodded off.

My final, out in Spain, event was a visit to the Camera Club over in Petrer. I'd popped in to their exhibition when we were in Petrer for an event a couple of weekends ago, and the bloke looking after the exhibition had told us that the club meets regularly on Thursday evenings. I mentioned these meetings on the Facebook page of the Pinoso Camera Club, and one of the, I think, founding members of that group said he'd be happy to go along if I did. So Bill and I went along to a meeting of the Grup Fotogràfic de Petrer yesterday evening. 

The activity was that the members of the group had been given "homework" to take a nighttime photo. A photography professor from Madrid then commented on each of the photos in a sort of Zoom-type conference call. People could join the presentation either in the HQ of the club, as we and about maybe fifteen people did, or from their home or office. I'd talked to the organisers beforehand, and they were perfectly welcoming and friendly without being effusive. I was a bit surprised that, as the club members came in to the room, they didn't seem surprised that there were a couple of gúiris in their midst nor did they show much interest in us. I found the session perfectly interesting without being overwhelmingly exciting. I'm considering signing up as the quality of the photos didn't make me feel totally inadequate. I think, for Bill, it was all a bit more difficult as he doesn't have a lot of Spanish. When the critique session was over, I checked a few questions about club membership and activities with the chap who had been most welcoming, and then we cleared off. Maybe it would have got livelier if we'd stayed for the beer and snack we were offered as we were leaving.