The Journey Continues

Posted by LoisLane at Wednesday, September 19, 2007 5:08 AM and is filed under Times in Life,The Road Less Traveled

My first night in Malaga, I arrived from Africa without a reservation and desperate for a place to lay my head. The trouble was it was the first night of “La Feria de Malaga,” a two-week party celebrating the city and its Flamenco dance. Unluckily for me, every bed in the city was taken.

I knew where I wanted to stay and by the time I found it, it was well after midnight. By ringing the bell, I woke up Luis, the proprietor, who was surprised to be receiving another guest. I won’t get into the details but after a little back and forth, he admitted he did have one more bed he saved for special long-term guests. He told me I could stay for two nights in a loft room with a terrace and a view. Whatever, I thought, I was in. Two nights turned into weeks.

The rumors we hear about how the Spanish party, are not exaggerated. They start in the city center, where the streets are filled with stages and traditional Spanish tapas and Cartojal, a syrupy-sweet Malagan wine. People were literally singing and dancing in the streets.



During these two weeks, siestas happen later in the day between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. instead of 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. They wouldn’t dare interrupt a party just to get out of the sun. Some places close altogether.

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At night, the party moved over to the fairgrounds, where there were more stage performances, more food — ah, the chocolate covered churros with vanilla cream — and rides. I never understood why there would be so much food at a place where they planned to get on rides that went in every direction but I never saw one person lose their composure.

All females, including little girls, dress in the traditional flamenco outfits to attend these events. As an outsider, it was a strange thing to see 2-year-olds dressed as flamenco dancers eating cotton candy at three in the morning but I witnessed it.

Malaga is the birthplace of both Pablo Ruiz Picasso AND Antonio Banderas. It’s an interesting little beach city, where they are currently working to install a subway. It’s no way as big as Barcelona but is the capital of the Costa del Sol region, so it has plenty to offer.

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It’s no wonder I wanted to live there. It won’t happen in 2007 but I’m sure I will be back. After talking with the local English-language newspaper here, it seemed I would certainly get the job. And I would have if I was traveling on a European passport. Here’s what the editor told me in her final email:

“I have spoken to Michel and our accountants about you and about you getting a work permit and so on. It looks like it is going to be very complicated etc and I don’t think, to be honest with you, it will work out – if you had been an EU citizen, it would probably have not been so much of a problem, but they will want to know why we would give a job to an American and not a European person and so on and so forth. It just becomes very involved, so I think we will have to leave it. I am really sorry – I wanted you here on the team!!”

So we indeed left it at that. Since then I have been working on yet another project I started before I left America: My first novel. I am happy to report I have almost finished and am putting down the story’s climax in between writing this blog entry, eating, sleeping, etc.

Having no gainful employment has complicated my travel just a bit because tourist visas for the Schengen are only three months long. My weeklong trek to Africa wasn’t enough by two months and three weeks to reset my tourist visa for the European Union. So, I had to decide to wait and see if I got a job becoming eligible for a work permit, go to England, which is part of the Schengen states but doesn’t adhere to the visa provisions (and is totally expensive), or just give up and go home. In the meantime, I have come to Norway to trade my summer gear for winter clothes.

I quickly decided home was not an option, although it would have been much easier. I thought about England for a while but it is just as hard for Americans to get a job there as it is in most places in the EU. Finally I came up with a solution: Prague in the Czech Republic.

It’s cheap, trendy and most importantly, won’t implement the Schengen until the end of the year. So I can go there, get a job (either freelancing for the Prague Post, which has already told me they want pitches or teaching English), live cheaply and have a good time getting to know one of Europe’s hottest destinations.

Through this and the rest of my trip I have learned what they say about travel is true: It’s not where you go but how you get there that makes all the difference.

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