A stroke of good fortune (La Corunha, Spain)

I’m writing this on a train! I’ve just left A Corunha to go to A Guarda, which is smaller by a factor of 25(ish). The ride to Vigo, my in-between stop, takes about two hours, and I imagine that the bus ride the rest of the way will be short. Galicia is very small. (We are in a tunnel. We have emerged! Dense foliage! Rocky walls!)

Yesterday was wonderful. I successfully arose at 5:30 in the morning (unghmmph), and, when I arrived to the lonja, immediately found Guillermo’s wife, Mirela. We soon located Guillermo and their son, who is my age. They explained that the fish sale would be unusual that morning, because, in preparation for the Fiesta de San Juan in the evening, everyone would be buying sardines. (Horses! Houses! We are in Meirama.) It was true! The sardines were expensive and went fast; other fish were neglected. Guillermo and Mirela explained that they usually buy some fish to resell at 11:00, when they set up their smaller-scale operation at the dock, but the fish today were all either of poor quality or of unreasonably high price, so instead of seeing Guillermo in action, I was given a royal tour. He renamed all of the fish for me (this time I took photos in the same order that I wrote down the names, so that I can match them up later in my computer) and told me about his life – when he and his son wake up (it depends on the season; they always wake up about an hour and a half before sunrise, so at about 4:30 now and about 6:30/7:00 in the winter), what they do when they’re on the boat (they usually travel an hour out, then they use their sonar device to locate groups of fish and net them), what factors affect fishing (season, weather, climate – he said that the effects of global warming were noticeable – laws, luck). I also asked him about fish farms, wondering if they posed a threat to fishermen’s livelihoods, but he said that fish farms catered to a different market because the quality of the fish is so poor. (Another tunnel.) The four of us had a coffee at the cafeteria where I first met Fran, exchanged contact information, and parted ways.

The day was gray and I was feeling lonely, so, after taking a nap back at the hostel and filling my windowless room with the smell of dead fish, I decided to go to the beach and read (indulging my moodiness by sitting next to a gray sea). It was deserted! And the tide was low, so that all of the rocks that before had looked like ominous dark blobs beneath the water looked like, you know, rocks. I thought, “I’ll stay until the tide rises!” and almost (ooh the landscape is beautiful) fulfilled my plan. By the time I left, some of my arrival footprints were about ten feet from the new shore, underwater. I had to stand awkwardly by the street for a while, waiting for my pants to dry, and I noticed two things: An enormous sea-themed sculpture that I hadn’t seen before, and a group of teenagers rolling garbage bins full of wood onto the sand. Preparations for the night! The sculpture, it turned out, was made of cardboard and was actually a pyre. The young’uns (being all of 21 and thus infinitely superior to teenagers in wisdom and experience, I get to call them “young’uns”) (I’ve never known where to put the apostrophe/s in that word) were setting up the wood for a bonfire! I wandered on foot until I got lost, as is my wont, then found my way back to the hostel without consulting my map or asking for directions. I know: I am pretty impressive.

Back at the hostel I took another short nap (I think we just passed a corn field!) and then left to meet with Sylvia, one of the people from the day excursion on Saturday (with the husband named Juan and the baby named Julia). Loneliness, begone! Sylvia and I walked-and-talked to the hills with the stones by the sea, and she invited me to join her and a group of friends for the night festivities. Of course I was thrilled and said “YES!!!!!” but managed to keep some of the exclamation points in my head so as not to deafen her. At 8:00 we met with Juan and Julia, Puri and Antonio (who are 60 and 80, respectively, and exactly how I want to be when I am 60 and 80), and Marta, who was so kind that she offered me a ride to Lugo or Vigo or the town where she’s from, which lies on the path to Santiago de Compostela, at any time during the rest of my stay; she travels to those places often for work.

The Fiesta de San Juan is impressive! Every restaurant in the city sets up a grill – many on the street -- where they roast fresh and heavily salted sardines. And every resident of the city walks around to eat the sardines with bread and wine. Sylvia, who is a sardine aficionada, taught me how to properly dismantle the fish with my fingers, although I balked at the idea of eating the eyes, and we feasted first at a tavern and then in a park where there was live music, dancing, and a huge crowd! By that time the sun had set, and shortly after 11:00 we walked to the beach to see the midnight fireworks and the bonfires. The beach was covered in fire! The bonfires were so big and so hot that empty rings formed around them where people couldn’t stand, and we could see the flames on the sculpture when it was lit, even though we were far away. The fireworks were beautiful (fireworks are on the List of Things That Make Me Sympathetic to Humanity). The streets were full of drunken people. The air was cool and smelled of sardines and smoke (soon my room would smell like even more dead fish). The stars were aligned.

This is my stroke of good fortune: I always meet such good people! Sylvia, Juan and I agreed that we would go to the Playa de las Catedrales (google it!) at some point in August or September, and I hope that we make other plans, too! Simon and Almudena have also told me that I am welcome to stay with them the next time I am in A Corunha and not to hesitate to contact them for anything. Guillermo and Mirela were my unofficial (and then semi-official) guardians at the docks. I’m sad to leave new friends behind so quickly, but so happy to have them. Gush gush gush.

And now I’m on the bus on my way to La Guardia! The hills are covered in trees and little houses, and the driver is angry at the teenagers sitting behind me. What does the next week hold in store?! (It certainly holds more photos in my photo blog, but it looks like internet in La Guardia will be trickier than in La Corunha.)