21st October 2009 - Huesca

Dismayed with Catalunya

Jana and I arrived in Girona (Ryanair’s version of Barcelona) late on Tuesday and drove our rather feeble hire car into Girona for some much needed rest.  We got rather confused driving around the old town of Girona at night and in the end Parked our car in Plaza de Catalunya and decided to find our hostel on foot.   The place we stayed at, HI Cerveri de Girona, was your typical youth hostel international type place and there was not anything particularly wrong with the place and yet we both felt it was a disappointment and the uncomfortable nights sleep we got in the only room available (a dorm) just emphasised that.  Thank you to the group of French girls by the way, who came in at 3 am and then proceeded to snore all night.  When we open a hostel we are going to have  a snorers dorm I reckon.

I think that perhaps Jana and I are not suited for dorms.  We slept mostly in private rooms in South America although the odd night in a dorm was quite fun as we always made friends.  If we can find a proper backpackers hostel it might well be worth looking at a dorm again but in our experience, HI places don’t count for some reason.  It rarely seems to conducive to making friends in an HI type hostel.

The following morning it hit us that we barely understood a word anyone was saying to us.  This might not trouble your average Brit abroad on the Costa del Sol but Jana and I have both studied Spanish and travelled extensively in South America.  We ate and drank Spanish when we were working at our hostel in Nicaragua and so to be stumped when asking for directions in Girona was mighty disheartening.

The reason for our incomprehension, as you possibly have guessed, is that people here speak Catalan.  Even when we ask a question in Spanish, we get a response in either Catalan, or a Catalan dialect of Spanish that is virtually indecipherable.

That morning, our first full day in Spain, it rained gatos y perros (cats and dogs) and that, coupled with our dismay at the language barrier and the bad nights sleep we got in our hostel dorm precipitated a  mood of desolation bordering on deep depression. I took to smoking cigarettes and even Jana, often the optimistic one in our partnership, could not be anything but downbeat about our prospects.  We jumped in the car and drove.

Girona seems nice enough and climate is good.  Night-time, even in October, is a pleasant temperature, and the summers are balmy and sun-drenched. However, our overall impressions were that this is not the place for us.  For one thing there were no backpackers there, even in the towns only youth hostel. The old town of Girona is very attractive, with narrow cobbled streets, attractive old sandstone facade and an interesting array of Tapas bars, fashion boutiques and explorable alleyways.  Even though there were a couple of Irish Bars, a sure sign that international tourism is close at hand, there does not seem to be enough in Girona to sustain interest.  And then there is this Catalan thing.  How disheartening, having spent a year learning Spanish, to find that no-one wants to speak Spanish with you.  I think that the heavy rain did not do Girona justice either, we may have felt differently in nice weather but the soaking we received only reinforced our feeling that Girona is a non-starter.

Once on the rain soaked road out of town we decided, more or less spontaneously, to get out of Catalunya.  We had spend a couple of hours researching hostels in Barcelona but in the end we didn’t even get close to Gaudi’s hometown.  Apart from an unexpected diversion (got lost) to the town of Quark where we talked to a lovely old man in a coffee shop who deigned to speak Spanish to us, we did not see any more of Catalunya and instead headed through the mountains to Huesca in Aragon.

The old guy in the coffee shop was great actually, and he cheered us up no end.  We must have looked pretty despondent;  here we are, the beginning of our great adventure to live in Spain and open our dream hostel together, and we are tired, soaked, unimpressed and can’t even converse with the local people.  Jana, with her instinctive penchant for exaggeration, even told me that she wanted to die. The old chap told us to come back in the summer when the world was beautiful. He also told us about his grandchildren and then decided to launch into a brief history of Catalunya and how they have never really been a part of Spain.  He even used the term occupation at one point.  Clearly he harbours sympathies for the Catalan separatists.

The drive across the middle of Catalunya to Huesca was beautiful.  The route is fairly mountainous, the roads, like in much of Spain, are good and the traffic light.  The twisting mountain highway, which our low-powered Toyota Yaris really struggled with, would bend to reveal yet another beautiful village nestled on the top of a hill, usually crowned with an old sandstone church.   We also passed countless farms and villas which looked stunning and that, coupled with the landscape, also helped to lift us out of our funk.

Jana took on a good share of the driving, which is noteworthy because it is the first time she has driven any distance since passing her driving test last year.  She did a fine job.

We arrived in the ancient town of Huesca shortly before sunset.  The city is the capital of the Aragon region and has a charm and character quite different to  Girona or Barcelona.  Here in Aragon they speak proper Spanish and that is a big plus for us.  We booked into a little “hostel” called San Marcos and went out for a bite to eat.  Anyone who finds themselves in Huesca can do a lot worse than the Taberna de Pinxos in the old town.  You just help yourself to delicious Tapas and then pay at the end by presenting your wooden toothpicks, there is one sticking from every dish, to the waitress.  I love honesty systems like that.  In just about the whole of Spain the customer pays at the end of the meal or if you are in a bar, you order your drinks but do not pay until you are ready to leave.  Somehow expecting customers to be honest like this seems more civilised to me.

Hostel San Marcos was adequate but it is not what Jana and I class as a hostel, it is just a budget hotel.  We got our own, fairly nice, room with a TV and a bathroom but there was no common area or chance to socialise with the other guests.  No information on things to do in Huesca and no sense of community or of being welcomed.  Jana and I need to think very carefully about what we name our backpackers hostel.  Here in Northern Spain, Hostal (or hostel) often just means budget hotel.  We want our visitors to understand that they can get accommodation but also so much more.  I suppose we are modelling our ideal on many of the South American hostels we have visited but such places also exist in Europe, some key ingredients being plenty of space and communal areas to socialise, food and drink served, excursions and activities, helpful staff, lots of info, a chance to make friends with other guests, an ambience that encourages people to hang out and make friends.  It does not even have to be that cheap, private rooms are often the same as in a hotel, although a few budget dorm beds definitely works well.

We had an evening stroll around Huesca and decided that although the place seemed infinitely preferable to Girona, we would not want to live here.  The recently added airport and good bus station means that there may well be tourists but at the time we were there we were not aware of any and the town seemed just a little on the small and provincial side.  We are not looking to live in a huge Metropolis but a little more culture and life would be welcome.  The old town of Huesca is very attractive and there are some good bars and restaurants there, such as the student hang-out we went to called Jardin Botanico, and even though there is a university as well we do not think the town would be a great backpackers magnet.  Onto the next one, we decided.