March 5, 2017 Comments (2) Views: 1812 Urban Trekker

I have to admit, I have had a couple of strange traveling experiences so far in my life, but none of them was anything like my work-related trip to Spain. As soon as our plane landed in Málaga, the most southern situated airport in Europe, and after a five-hour-long flight from overcrowded Istanbul, we faced showers of rain. That’s how our endeavor of Andalusia started.

“Welcome to Andalusia. Here it usually doesn’t rain, but we waited long enough for rain. We did not have it for six months, and it only started to rain yesterday. I am sorry that your visit happens to be right now when we won’t have much sun,” said one of our hosts in Spanish-English, who was to pick us from the airport and drive us to the final destination of our long journey.

We said good-bye to Málaga behind us, a beautiful city, we had heard a lot about, and that we planned to see just upon the arrival, and headed for Mollina. On the way to the small town that awaited us for the seminar, the exotic scenery of Andalusia opened in front of us under the rain. Cacti trees and big rocks looked deformed, and it was close to a scenery where as if the rain has fallen in the midst of thirsty dessert. After an hour-long drive, we entered the small streets of Mollina, where rivers of rainwater were flowing and it was impossible to move by foot until the next day.

Long shower, a nice dinner and recharging in bed, that’s pretty much how day one concluded. The next day, the weather was better and we took an hour to see Mollina. That was just enough time to see all ends of the place. Calm and peaceful, there was yet something weird about the place. The town, or rather a small village, looked shrink and very soon I was clear that it was mostly elderly people who had remained to live here. Most of the young people were out there in the world, looking for better jobs, and rarely returning home.

Many houses also looked abandoned and uninhabited. All houses had their blinds shut, and during night, the overall feeling was spooky. I had the impression that this small town would perfectly fit a Hollywood scenario for a well-plotted horror movie with a lot of ghosts, except that it was utterly safe to roam around. As much as it looked spooky, it was beautiful at the same time.

A highlight of our encounters of Mollina, was that single night when we gathered a group of people from the seminar, and went up for some drinks in the local bar, the only one being opened at night. During daytime, there were still few other venues where one could get a cup of coffee or enjoy a Spanish delight of tapas with wine. At the entrance of the bar, we were greeted by a big man with a huge smile on his face. He looked rather tipsy, told us a couple of jokes and then bragged about being the only taxi driver working in Mollina at the moment. It was funny, because the man obviously did not have a demanding job, and getting drunk before 9 PM was simply OK. Hope his business is thriving well enough, though.

At the end of that evening in the bar, we even managed to get lost. To our surprise, nobody could remember from which side did we arrive at the bar, so we took the wrong end. That resulted in an hour-long circling around Mollina, just because everything looked the same during night and there was not a single person alive and moving on the streets to ask for directions. Luckily, we were a bunch of people and laughed out loud at the ridiculous situation. Under the dim lights, the white facade houses looked even more spooky, but again, there was an estranged feeling of beauty that just made the whole “getting lost” experience an easygoing one.

During our stay in Spain, we also visited another nearby village or town in Andalusia. I can now barely remember the name of the place, but it did not differentiate much from Mollina. Small, bit more lively, the second village also had the typical Andalusian architecture. Most of the houses had their blinds shut as well. We paid a visit to a local factory that manufactured special Spanish Christmas treats, and that’s probably what everybody brought for friends and family back home. Nothing, in particular, happened to the rest of the journey. That’s it.

The only time my adrenaline went up was when an officer back at the Malaga airport checked me up with a test for explosives (did I make a suspect for a terrorist?) and when the lady at the airport desk told us that the flight back home will be delayed for twenty-four hours (Are you nuts? I already had five extensively long days!). I tried to remain calm and not get angry at these final moments of my days in Spain, and now, when I think about, it’s funny! How many times could it happen to you: that you go to an all-paid trip to Spain, and all you see is an almost empty village with one bar and single taxi driver in the middle of nowhere? At least, when I tell this story to friends, we always laugh out loud at how strange this journey was.

Tags: Andalusia, Mollina, Spain