I arrived in Granada on Sunday morning (cue Maroon 5 and/or Wilco). At this point, I’d been staying with CM and familia and enjoying a very laid-back, socially oriented lifestyle. I received offers via CM for housing in Rute and work in Lucena. (Gotta love being a native speaker of English. Privilege much?) It all sounded pretty good to me… I made the trek to Granada, just in case, to see if it was worth the almost two-hour commute in lieu of this picture of life that had been painted for me in Rute.
Turns out, I fell in love with Granada the moment I stepped off the bus. Just suck it up and commute, Tiff–who needs sleep anyway?
Following directions from the girl at the information desk, I grabbed the next 33 from the bus station to the city center. She told me to get off at the Cathedral, but seeing as how it was my first time in the city, I missed the Cathedral stop and got off near Recogidas. No matter. It was still mid-morning, and my hostel didn’t allow check-ins until 2:00 (so said HostelBookers, which I think was a lie), so I took the opportunity to wander. The city was still waking up, the weather was perfect, the rooms for rent were advertised aplenty on flyers flapping in the breeze.
I read online somewhere in the blogosphere that the best thing to do was to walk around and see what barrio or area of the city was most attractive to me. I meandered toward Plaza Trinidad since that’s where my hostel was located. I actually got lost looking for the hostel and wound up in Gran Capitán. Luckily for me, there’s also a GOWEX Wifi (I’m starting to pronounce this as “wee-fee” like the Spaniards) stationed in the plaza. I sat down with a treacly pain au chocolat and soaked up the rays of the Internet. All around me were typical tesseract-like apartment buildings. Not too shabby.
I spent most of the day piso hunting, collecting slips of paper with telephone numbers, sometimes with more details like the address, price, number of rooms, gastos included, amenities available. I ended up with a dozen or so by the end of the day and hadn’t called a single one of them because I hadn’t come out of my shell yet. I still haven’t, probably, but now I feel (slightly) less embarrassed to speak in Spanish. I mean, I already look different from everyone here; it’s no surprise that the words coming from my mouth aren’t Andalusian.
One guy came up to me while I was perusing the anuncios in Trinidad, asked if I needed a piso, and offered to show me one he was posting flyers for. I followed him to Plaza Gracia, where he took me up to the flat his mother was renting. Everything there was approximately 20-30 years old and, while in workable condition, was not indicative of somewhere I’d like to live. They were nice people, and even offered to have me over for Christmas, but it was time to move on.
Unfortunately, most of the (16?) pisos I visited between Sunday and today were in similar pseudo-dilapidated states. There was always something off-kilter about the flats: location, heating options, weird roommates. After days of walking everywhere, getting lost, being late, and not knowing how to apologize cordially in Spanish, I was tired. The decent pisos had all been rented to other people by the time I decided I might want to live there. And that amount of time was usually less than a day–I started to panic since all the good ones were going fast!
It started raining on Wednesday–only lightly but it’s enough to be a nuisance–and I still had pisos to see. L has been gracious enough to let me crash on her couch for the past few days, but I obviously can’t stay here forever! Finally, though, the second to last flat on my day’s schedule turned out to be perfect, if expensive (for Granada; rent in Spain is all significantly cheaper than in the States). The apartment is brand new, and it’s only a 2-3 minute walk from the bus stop that I have to take in the morning to go to work. I’m mostly excited about 1) the beautiful oven and kitchen, and 2) my room is ginormous and has a balcony with a (slightly obstructed) view of the Alhambra and Sierra Nevadas.
I’m signing the contract in a couple of hours. I’m significantly less stressed than I was a couple of days ago. Now that I’ve found a piso, I can focus on filling up the rest of my time in Granada with things like giving private English lessons, taking a Spanish class (maybe finding an intercambio), learning classical guitar, joining a yoga studio, and training for that Málaga half-marathon in April. Everything is falling into place!
dreaming, scheming, fantasy-weaving 