Day 32: Finding our Way
We left the house at 8:00 and returned at 11:15, took a total of 4 trams/metros, bought coffee para llevar, and walked to and from Inter Estudios, WITHOUT USING OUR PHONES!
We’ve been in the Rascanya neighborhood for a month, and we’ve been taking classes at Inter Estudios for 2.5 weeks. To get from one place to the other can be done by bus or metro (tram) and we’ve done both. Depending on which method you choose you have a different walk from the stop/station to the school. Until yesterday, everywhere we’ve traveled that isn’t in our immediate neighborhood has required pulling out our phones and following little beacon dots as they slide along predetermined routes.
Given the choice between the busses and the metro, we prefer the metro. It seems faster, has fewer stops/starts/turns, and is generally a bit less crowded than the busses. Our navigation apps *really* wanted us to take a bus yesterday. We chose to follow our guts instead, AND IT WORKED!
Benefits to our newfound geographical and transit comfort?
- We got to see where the money goes from the ticket machines at the train station
- We discovered where the university students converge (it’s the Benimaclet stop, in case you weren’t sure).
- We found a coffee shop in the metro station (because we went up the right staircase for the first time) and navigated the transaction in (almost) flawless Español.
- We had our hands free enough to hold hands and hold our steaming hot coffees.
- We didn’t need to charge our phones before bedtime.
Most importantly, I felt like we knew where we were the whole time. Having lived in one place for most of my life, this used to be a given. Our last stint in Evanston was for just shy of 25 years — I always knew where I was, how to get where I wanted to go, and what I’d see along the way. The last 3+ months has been full of uncertainty and maps.
Now, that trip from Rascanya to Russafa was our last time needing to travel that route. To bookend our day we spent the last 30 minutes (that’s all it took to get all of our belongings back into containers) of our day packing up to leave the Hobbit House.
Thank you, Rascanya, for being an awesome introduction to España — we’ll be back to visit regularly (we’re not ready to say goodbye to Dream Coffee, for one thing). Thank you, Hobbit House, for being our home base as we adjusted to this new country and culture.
Day 33 will be all about learning new routes and finding new spots to become regulars and navigating the aisles of new grocery stores. The little taste of familiarity will be replaced with following the little beacon again and that’s ok. This move will land us somewhere we can stay for at least 6 months (hopefully longer) and where we can UNPACK!
