Hope everyone is doing well out there. Today was another riveting day in La Línea de la Concepción. The current agenda for us Americans has been apartment hunting. We´ve pretty much been at it all day and though things were bleak at first, they´re beginning to shape up. As today is Sunday, virtually the entire town, minus the church and a few cafes, are closed for the day. The Spanish take Sunday as a family day, and since most of them don´t want to work - they don´t. So when I say things are shaping up, I really mean that we have a lot of appointments to see places tomorrow. So hopefully it will work out.
Aside from that, we´ve just been exploring the city. I think I mentioned this last time, but its nice as long as you stick to the center. The center is clean, and the apartments are quaint, but the farther you walk out from the center (or cathedral) the more ghetto and the less fab the places get. Its hard to draw a distinct like because out near the edges of the ´´good´´ neighborhood the streets and some plazas look like Nuclear Bomb Land but then the apartments/houses are straight from Cute European Houses Inc.
Mira, this picture is of one of those nice little complexes. You would never know that the adjacent street was lined with trash.
Its sounds weird, but this sort of contrast is a good description of the town. Because its so close to Gibraltar (or Gib to the Brits) and Africa, La Línea has an incredible mix of cultures. Several bars cater specifically to the English and the schools in Gib, along with the Queen´s English, teach a language that´s a Spanish-English-Mediterranean mix called Llanito. It´s really wild to listen to because at first it sounds like they are just meshing English and Spanish words together: ´´Quieres a spot of tea, porque quiero ir a...´´ But its not a simple mix - its more complex. Think of a techno DJ who remixes the new single from Brittany Spears meets Pink Floyd: ''Wish you were here to hit me baby one more time." Both Brittany and Roger are there, but with some weird lights and lots of bass. The weird lights and bass are odd bits of Mediterranean syntax and grammar that have sneaked their way in over the years.
And yeah, there's Llanito in a wild musically metaphorical nutshell. Hope y'all can decipher my metaphors. I'll be back with more soon.
Happy trails,
Zach.
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