A Rather Colder Spain

Come January 1998, and with a shiny new TESOL English teaching qualification clutched in my crumpet-plumped paw, I packed my life back into an over-large suitcase, and flew out to the laughably titled ‘International Airport of Granada’.

(Which I understand was renamed in 2006 as the ‘FedericoGarcíaLorcaGranada-JaénAirport’ and must therefore be in possession of  the longest name for the smallest airport that I have ever come across – unless it has recently been subject to an important overhaul with resulting Heathrow-like proportions,  in which case I apologise profusely.)

I peered disbelievingly from the window as the plane taxied cautiously down the itsy-bitsy runway and drew to a halt outside what at first glanced appeared to be somebody’s garden shed.

I of course write in jest; but as I and my small number of fellow passengers prepared to disembark and stroll fifty metres across the tarmac into the airport building, I did momentarily wonder whether it would be a vibrant city of culture that greeted me at my journey’s end; or a goat, a donkey and the hairy-arsed back of beyond.

Once inside the terminal, I weaved my ever-so-slightly-worried way in and out of bunch after bunch of bemused and straggling travellers – Arrivals and Departures apparently interchangeable as well as unmarked – and random luggage-less locals who seemed just to have popped in for a coffee; before collecting my own suitcase from the solitary conveyor belt and heading for the exit.

A quarter of an hour later, and I was setting off at a handsome pace towards the city of Granada.

After the surprising proportions of the airport, one of the next things to strike me about my new home was the cold. Admittedly it was January;  if I had been back in Northamptonshire I would have accepted the wintry conditions as an unchangeable aspect of the status quo, but this was the South of Spain; a place that my simple little brain could not conceive of as partnered with anything other than blazing sunshine.

But bloody cold it unarguably was, and for once I was thankful for the travelling attire that had been dictated at the other end by Blighty’s equally seasonal chill.

So as I wound my way into the streets of Granada, I was unjustifiably smug to witness the myriad of winter tourists stubbornly dressed as if enjoying the milder climes of the Islas Canarias or the Baleares: entire families of Northern Europeans striding from museum to monument and then on to Moroccan-themed tea shop in colourful shorts, t-shirts and sandals; all of which clashed horribly with unsightly scarlet noses and the painful blue and purple hue of half-frozen limbs.

Smugness aside, I couldn’t help but sympathise: a holiday is a holiday when all is said and done. Those who favour colder climates willingly head for skiing trips in Whistler or snowboarding somewhere similarly crispy;  but when on one’s hols in España, one expects a healthy dose of sunburn as par for the course and dresses accordingly.

Yanking me abruptly from my anthropological ponderings, the taxi left the hustle and bustle of the city’s main avenues and its stalwart tourists, and began to head steeply uphill, bouncing over suddenly cobbled streets that were leading us into an entirely different and far more atmospheric area of the city.

After negotiating a honeycomb of narrow streets, squeezing our way between whitewashed houses that occasionally parted to give tantalising flashes of the city now stretched out below,  we eventually drew to a halt in front of some large wooden doors and the taxi driver turned around to face me.

‘Aquí estamos.’

Less than two minutes later, my large suitcase resting companionably at my feet, I paid my fare and watched as the only familiar face in the whole of Granada swerved off over the cobbles.

I had arrived.

Back to the Hallowed Halls

Those large brown doors that heralded my arrival in Granada, also heralded a return to the classroom.

The language school I had chosen – with a highly technical decision-making tool involving a pin and a copy of the yellow pages – was in the Albaicín, which I still believe to be the most attractive area of the city of Granada and upon whose delights I will expound in my next chapter. For now, however, I must concentrate on the not so organised chaos that was the Instituto Español de Granada.

Opting to ‘live-in’ rather than find myself sharing a flat with strangers, I was given a tiny room with a warped wooden door that had to be viciously kicked open and shut; liberally coating the floor with the flakes of wall paint with each almighty slam.

The only exterior window looked directly out onto the cobbles of calle Santa Isabel La Real: a proximity so cosy and intimate that all the furniture in the room jumped sympathetically up and down with the bumpy passing of every vehicle.

But in order to avoid the intrusive gaze of curious tourists with a propensity to peer through my ground floor window, I was forced to keep those shutters closed much of the time; and as my other window looked directly into the entrance hall, where fellow students congregated before and after most lessons, I soon found myself shuttered in on both sides.

Thankfully I was prevented from feeling totally cut off from the rest of the world, by the fact that my room backed right onto the small lobby next to the front door; paper-thin walls ensuring I was kept privy to all the school’s comings and goings.

It was a definite shock to the system to be back in ‘full-time’ education after so many years.

For one, I was the only British student in the entire school: Holland, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Greece, Japan, Denmark, Norway and Belgium being just some of the countries that had supplied me with my fellow linguists. Our ages ranged from 18 to 35 and I was also interested to note that most of our number were female.

The teachers were very amused to discover that I already spoke the language, and with a hearty Andalucian twang into the bargain. Although there were a few other students who spoke some Spanish, what seemed to set me apart more than anything was how colloquial my usage of the language was. They found it absolutely hysterical to have this obviously English girl – pale hair, pale skin, freckles, awful dress sense: unmistakable – in front of them gabbling away like an Andalucian barrow boy (if such a thing existed).

My feelings of superiority, however, were soon put firmly back in their box when the time came to decide in which classes we should all be put.

For I discovered that although I seemed to have picked up an inherent sense of which was the correct grammar to use, it was a totally different story when it was put in a classroom context. I simply couldn’t get my mind around all the different parts of speech that they were quizzing me about, even though I unwittingly used the constructions in an everyday conversational context.

And so without further ado, and feeling like a bit of a dunce, I was banished from the advanced class to the more lowly intermediate rung of the linguistic ladder.

A little disappointed to discover that some aspects of my character remained unaffected by my recent life-changing experience, I found the  lessons to be less the intellectual revelation I had been hoping for, and rather more as boring as hell – yes, I was still one of those people to whom the sight of a blackboard with a teacher hovering next to it brings on almost immediate mental shut-down.

Luckily, getting to know the wonderful city of Granada was proving to be altogether more fun…