Graná: Land of Shwarma, Hippies and Thugs

¡Buenas tardes!

Recently, I have been thinking that many people are not familiar with the city of Granada, where I am now living and so I hope the following will provide you all with a brief introduction to the city and my life in it.

As some friends have asked already, Granada is not a city near Barcelona. Instead, it lies in the Southern province of Andalucía and has a population of about 200,000. Many of these are young university students as the university of granada is huge with different campuses spread throughout the city with around 60,000 students total.

Granada is a beautiful city and could not be better situated. It's in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountain range (which is currently covered in snow!) and approximately 50 minutes from the nearest beach. It's definitely cold as a result of the snow-capped peaks nearby, but provides a stunning backdrop to everything in the city. Literally from most vantage points in the city, one can see the sierra nevada (the title picture of this blog is from the Mirador, which means viewpoint, de San Nicolas overlooking the Alhambra and the Sierras.)

Also what makes Granada so special is that it's small and almost everything is within walking distance. Whether I need to go get some delicious shwarma, buy a hookah (there is a large north african population in Granada, which has led to the proliferation of many tea/hookah shops), eat a fairly delicious tapa for free with your drink (a custom only practiced in the provinces of Granada and Jaen), enjoy the healing powers of beautiful Arab baths, be told how handsome I am while being offered a branch of rosemary while simultaneously these older ladies trie to milk you for every euro on you (it's a total scam and to anyone who visits granada, just politely ignore them; also see picture), or simply be nearly mugged and then punched in the face (for serious), Graná has it all.

There is even a large hippy population that live in caves, have dogs not on leashes and make awesome bracelets. In this same area of Granada where the hippies live, also live the gypsies. There are both modern caves and I guess you could say caves of the more ghetto variety. Both the gypsies and the hippies who inhabit Granada live in these and they are quite a sizable population. See pictures below.

So I did mention being mugged early and it probably peaked the attention of all you readers. And please do not worry, my friends and I are fine. So here's the story: we had a big christmas party Friday night. One of our friends got a little too drunk so we ended up walking her home around 230 (in the morning). Mind you, she only lives about 5 blocks away. Well on our way back to our place, Elisa, a friend and I were walking back. Two young spanish guys (the thugs in the title) walked by us and all of a sudden, grabbed my arms and started yelling at me in Spanish. Fortunately for me (you'll see why once you keep reading), the three of us had been talking in English so my mind was in English mode. When these guys grabbed me and started yelling at me, I had no idea what they were saying; I was just extremely confused. Elisa told me later that they were yelling dame todo (give me everything). Then, these thugs started to reach for my pockets to take my things. I started swatting their hands away and trying to break free from their hold. Next, I imagine due to my resistance, one of the guys punched me in the forehead at which point my friend Roberta started yelling at them to leave us alone (and don't worry, I wasn't hurt at all; the punch was pretty weak so that I don't even have a bruise or anything to brag about). At that point, they quickly grabbed her purse and made a dash for it. I was definitely fortunate that I did not lose anything and that they weren't armed. I was also fortunate that these were some dumb thugs, who couldn't even punch hard or right. What this does make me realize though is this can happen anywhere, even in a group of 3 in a usually safe area in a busy passway. There were lots of people around, just no one within a block or so. Personally, I think my salsa classes proved quite useful in this scenario simply because I was able to move my hips too quickly and too sexily for the thugs to steal my things.

Hopefully by now, all of you have a much better understanding of what Granada is all about; the land of shwarma, hippies and much much more.

Thanks for reading this far! I also want to give a shout out to my mom and aunt, Happy Birthday to the two of you (I won't even disclose how young you both are).

Pictures:

For Halloween, Elisa dressed up as one of the rosemary toting ladies who often sit in our plaza and try to bamboozle the tourists. A very stunning rendition indeed.

Caves of the more ghetto variety

More caves where the gypsies and hippies live

And there also was a random medieval fair the first two weekends we lived in Granada. And FYI, this is occurring in the plaza in front of our place. This band was awesome, but definitely got a little old after 3 days. My favorite was definitely the drummer with a big fro, he was awesome.