The most important question first:
yes, I took a surf course.
No, that has nothing to do with youth craze and midlife crisis. I don’t have a midlife crisis. All of my skater buddies from the halfpipe would confirm that too. Yolo!
But now to Andalusia: The camper knows three bad H’s: heat, high season and son of a bitch from car crackers. In the meantime we have experienced all three H’s, the first one, the heat, but never like in Andalusia. Seville, for example, is a beautiful city – between ten in the evening and ten in the morning. The rest of the day it’s a heat-shimmering pizza oven where every wall of a house, every monument, every cobblestone seems to scream at you: “What the hell are you doing here?” For example, when we arrived it was a slim 41 degrees. At half past seven in the evening. You know you are in Andalusia when you think for the first time at twelve at night at 29 degrees: „Oops, now it’s getting fresh!“
Nevertheless, Seville should not be missed. The city looks so exaggeratedly Spanish in places, as if you were walking through the theme world “Andalusia” in an amusement park: yellow-red house walls, ornate facades, colorful tiles, flamenco singers – you really want to ask someone all the time: “Muy bonito, pero dónde está la roller coaster ? ”You can also eat the best tapas in Spain here (the best tapas in the world are still available at Angela in Cologne, to whom I dedicated my last book for a reason). As a German tourist you do it at eight thirty, of course, and feel insanely southern – until the shop gradually fills up with Spaniards around half past ten.
Overall, our trip to Andalusia was a bit like an apnea dive: You drive to the coast and take a deep breath, dive into the hinterland, look at something (Cadiz! Ronda! Thanks for all your tips!) And then go to the air snap back to the sea. Why the majority of our supermarket vegetables are grown here of all places, in one of the driest regions I have ever seen, must remain the creamy secret of modern agriculture.
So schön das alles ist, ich merke, dass ich allmählich ein bisschen überfüttert bin von Sachen, die man „unbedingt gesehen haben muss“. Meine Erfahrung ist: unsere schönsten Erlebnisse hatten wir immer da, wo wir zufällig reingestolpert sind. Das beste Essen gab’s immer in den kleinsten Kabausen abseits vom Schuss. Und die schönsten Campingplätze lagen immer genau einen Ort neben den Touristenzentren. Deswegen hat es mich auch nicht gewundert, dass mein Andalusien-Highlight kam, als wir uns auf dem Weg von Ronda an die Küste verfahren hatten. Plötzlich tuckerten wir die absolut spektakuläre Bergstraße durch die Sierra de las Nieves entlang: Wälder, Schluchten, enge Straßen, man fährt durch die Wolken und kurz bevor es spooky wird, erkennt man am Horizont das Meer. Man sollte sich einfach insgesamt viel öfter verfahren…
PS: Next stop: Valencia. Actually only because I’ve read that the paella comes from there. Does anyone know a good restaurant? Dog-friendly (i.e. with an outside terrace) and German-friendly (i.e. warm meals before 10 p.m.)?