In the effort to understand what is going on around me I started living a very mental life, mainly of thoughts and analysis. In this process I kind of turned a part of me off, the part that seeks what is beautiful, I didn’t even realize this until recently and this made me question part of my behavior and way of living. So I decided to get out of my bubble and experience things in a less mental way and this trip to Spain came at the exact moment. When I got the invitation, my mind started saying that I don’t have time and money, but my mouth said yes.
So here we are in my first travel outside of my country and the first taught I had after seeing how things look in Spain was the joy of seeing such beauty, and it really is very beautiful around here. There is a combination of weather, architecture and people that triggered that part of me which seeks what is beautiful and I did something I never did before; to go out on the streets of Aguadulce and photograph the city, beach and port. This is literally the first time I took “artistic” photos and did some editing. The following post will be a combination of photos and thoughts about the differences between Romania and Spain.
The first thing that caught my attention was the warm and very well rounded architecture. Although the city is full of buildings which have totally different styles and colors, they all fit together in an organic way. The diversity makes for a very mesmerizing and beautiful walk around the city because everywhere you look there are perspectives and colors complementing each other into forming an architectural delight. And to make things even more interesting, everything is built on the mountains and in the rock, this creates several levels on which the city is built and offers splendid perspectives.
I come from a country that was mainly built in the communist era and that culture influenced architecture very much. Communism came with uniformity as a worldview and it was also accompanied by a very narrow focus on utility. So we have a lot of boring buildings that have mostly a very dull color; and they are all arranged in such a way that maximizes efficiency. But nothing for the human spirit in them.
On the other hand, I was quite surprised when seeing the Spanish architecture, which has a lot of designs that have a strictly visual side to them, without offering any utility or comfort. This would have been seen as a waste of materials in communism, but here it’s something you see at every street corner.
Another thing that I find fascinating is that although Aguadulce is on the Mediterranean seacoast, there still are a lot of communal pools between the building. This has a very interesting community effect because only the residents of those buildings have access to these pools and this makes for better community cohesion. It’s fantastic to see how different cultures come up with different solutions to the same questions of living space and common space.
Most of the streets are clean and the palm trees are well groomed, but one thing that is very out of place is dog shit everywhere. I was very confused how the soundings are so well managed and there can still be a lot of feces everywhere. But different conditions make things different. If architecture has a cultural influence, feces seem to have an environmental one. Because the sun is constantly shining and the wind blows all day and night, shit becomes quite solid quickly. So instead of getting dirty when you hit one of those pesky things on the street, because its solid you just push it away. This makes living with feces everywhere more manageable.
One thing that came as an inconvenience is that the food variety is quite limited. I personally don’t eat meat or seafood and this is a problem here because they mainly have a seafood diet. So the past week was full of pizza and french fries, but luckily we discovered a vegetarian restaurant in Almeria and it's just a half hour drive. But although this is an inconvenience for me, the people here seem to be more healthy because of their diet. The number of overweight people is significantly less than in Romania and senior citizens appear to be more active and they look better here.
And the people are also warmer here, although I don’t speak or understand Spanish, they way they look at you when you speak to them is quite profound. I saw this with all the waiters at different restaurants, they don’t just want to get the need information and go about their way, they look into your eyes and really try to understand what you want and they constantly check to see if everything is ok with a genuine attitude. People here are also not no inclined towards brands and status as Romanians, they dress and act more humble, they even drive a lot slower than we do. It is refreshing to see more humanity here, this also makes them a lot more calmer and not so stressed out.
And the weather is perfect this time of year. All around sunny but with temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius, which is just the right kind of hot. The sun also does not burn so hard compared to the Romanian seaside, which is also very good because in Romania I burn in a couple of minutes because I am very pale, but here I can stay in the sun for more time without any sunscreen.
The beach is not fully equipped as other beaches, but you can find a lot of things to do there. There are jungle gyms to work out and kids have playgrounds as well. And a very civilized thing, they have showers at every exit from the beach to the street. There is a tall shower if you want to do a full body wash down, but there are also low shower heads just for getting the sand off your feet. This helps a lot with keeping the streets clean and the sand at the beach.
I am very grateful for this opportunity to see another culture and understand that this results in different behaviors. I think I will be depressed when I come back to boring Bucharest, but I have a lot of work to do and it's easier to do it in less exotic places. I also enjoyed focusing on the beauty of things and I hope this trip will give me a lot of positive energy for some time to come.
I hope you enjoyed this piece of my travel journal and don’t hesitate to give some advice on the photos, I really need it :)
