Light and water

Falling cats, the Alhambra
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With what pain the light takes leave of Granada! It entangles itself between the cypresses or hides beneath the water.

- Federico García Lorca

The bus drops me off at the stop and roars off, kicking up a cloud of dust in its wake. I cross the busy street, dodging and weaving through cars. I stop and look at the city of Granada, a million lights in the early evening. The houses run upward upon a hill, and high atop the hill stands the towering form of the Alhambra. Behind the city I can make out the mountain range that is the Sierra Nevada, its snow-capped peaks far off in the distance.

The Patio of the Myrtles, Alhambra
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My first night is a strange one. After dropping my things at the youth hostel I decide to take a walk through the streets. Barely have I been walking five minutes when I come upon a car in flames. It's parked in a row of ordinary cars alongside the kerb. And there is fire coming out of the bonnet. It makes a plume of smoke that rises into the night. Soon there is a crowd gathering around. "Que paso?", what happened, a boy asks me. "No tengo idea", I've got no idea, I tell him. On and on and it burns and more onlookers gather. Sirens wail in the distance and a minute later the firetruck arrives and douses the flames. This creates more smoke, and for a while the whole block is invisible in the grayness. I walk off and a few minutes later a bearded, hatted bum approaches me. He asks for money and I give him some change. "Hey, you want some hash?" he says in English as I walk off. "It's Pakistani, good quality". " No thanks," I say.  "Wait!" he yells, "I know who killed John F. Kennedy!" I go into a cafe and have a hot chocolate, and this is my first night in Granada.

The Patio of the Lions, Alhambra
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The next day I head to the Alhambra in the morning, catching a bus that winds its way up through the streets to the top of the hill. In summer, supposedly the site gets over 6000 visitors a day but today there's not many other people around. I buy my ticket and head in.

Some history. In the 9th Century on the the strategic position overlooking the city the Alcazaba was built. In the 12th century the royal residence was established there, and from this point on began the most glorious period during which most the work that stands today was built by the best architects and craftsmen of the day. After the Catholic Reconquest came our old friend Carlos V, (who you'll remember ruined part of the Alcazar in Sevilla and the Mezquita in Cordoba) and he destroyed part of the complex to build his own palace. In 1812 some of the towers were blown up by the French who controlled Spain at the time. In fact, crazy old Napoleon had tried to blow up the entire thing but seconds before this was carried out a soldier, who we must sincerely thank, defused the explosives.

Incredible stucco work of one of the ceilings, the Alhambra
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And thanks to the grace of that unknown soldier we now have one of the most beautiful pieces of human construction in Europe and indeed in the world. The old Moorish poets called it "a pearl set in emeralds,". Such loveliness everywhere. A park filled with roses, oranges and English elms, the sound of running water from the nearby fountains. Inside the palace there is an abundancy of sun and light and wind flowing through. So graceful, natural, airy, light. With what pain the light takes leave, he wrote, and it's no wonder. I spend hours spent in the many rooms admiring the carvings and inscriptions.

The Alhambra
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Outside I meet two odd looking fellows and we start chatting away. We walk around and take some pictures together. One is German, Peter Kampschulter, he tells me. The other Austrian, he tells me his name but I forget it. Peter Kampschulter calls him by his last name, Reinhardt, so I take to calling him Mr. Reinhardt. This reminds me of the brilliant Django Reinhardt CD I found in Paris and subsequently lost, one of the major lowlights of my trip. They are actors, they tell me, in the German theatre. Crazy guys they are both. We head over to the majestic, grand gardens known as the Generalife and take more pictures there, fooling around. We realise that my blue cap is perfectly suited to Mr. Reinhardt's jacket and his gray cap perfectly suited to mine. We agree to swap and shake on it. Later I regret this and swap back, I got the cap in Paris and like it too much. As the sun starts to dip, we run around trying to get people to take a group photo of us. "The Chinese," Mr. Reinhardt says, indicating a group of girls sitting on a bench who look more Japanese to me. "Yas, the Chinese will help us." We get them to take a picture of us but it's not really very good. I take some good pictures of a church in the distance, the sun setting behind it and throwing up its golden rays into the clouds above. And come nightfall I say goodbye to them and head back down to the city. On my way I stop and walk around in the old Moorish quarter, the Albaycin, with its backalleys and maze of streets. It's much too big and easy to get lost so I head back down.

The Alhambra
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The next day I visit a Garcia Lorca exhibition and also the Huerta de San Vincente,  which was the summer home of the Lorca family. He stayed there just days before he was shot in 1936. The house stands in the middle of a grand park dedicated to him. It's filled with old men playing bowls, joggers, children playing around, teenagers loitering. The house itself is now a museum and like his birth place in Fuente Vaqueros it has been restored to resemble its original appearance. I stand and admire the bedroom where he wrote some his best and most famous works, his plays Yerma, Blood Wedding, Once Five Years Pass, and his book of poetry The Tamarit Divan. Unfortuneately in the shop downstairs there is much too much merchandise, like coffee mugs bearing his name. They don't belong there and I don't think they should be sold at all. And after I stroll in the park with all it's lovely flowers and some cypress trees, of which I think he would've been most pleased with.

The Alhambra
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So now I find myself on my last day in Granada and in Andalucia. In a few hours I have a bus back to Madrid from where I head on to Barcelona. After lunch I think I will take a siesta as they do here, perhaps go to the park again to sleep in the sun, its rays warming me up from the winter cold. And when the light takes leave (with much pain) I continue on the last legs of my journey.

Con qué trabajo tan grande deja la luz a Granada! Se enreda entre los cipreses o se esconde bajo el agua.

The city from the Alhambra
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- Federico García Lorca