Guardamar's Medieval Market

For three days only, a Medieval Market is set up on the street behind the church and stretches up to the base of the castle. This is the most beautiful and varied market so far in Guardamar--each booth is so unique! The Moors and Christians festival begins this weekend and this is one of the major events leading up to it. Everyone from town and all the tourists are here--our studio included!

The street that the Medieval Market follows is a residential street. Families open up their garage doors and invite friends to hang out. There's a section at the beginning that looks like it was set up by the locals, for the locals--there's a table with women selling home-baked treats, a table for kids to do arts and crafts, and a longer set of tables where elderly men and women were making lace. Yes, making lace! 

We couldn't communicate very well with them, but we found out that it takes a long time to make high quality lace. I believe it. Here are a couple of fans--definitely better than anything you can find at the dollar store! At the top left corner of the photo, you can see a little of the contraption that they use to make lace: wooden dowels with white thread wrapped around them to better control the thread. The thread is woven/knit/wrapped around dozens of pins. How the lace-maker knows what direction to weave the thread--that is a mystery. It looks so unbelievably intricate. 

At the start of the market is and hand-cranked flying swing set for the kids. I wanted to ride that so bad. 

There was such an eclectic and varied collection of booths! One brewed you a teapot of Moroccan tea and gave you a plate of Moroccan sweets. Many sold beautiful jewelry--woven, gold, silver, stainless steel, pearls, jewels. One sold hand-made shoes in bright, dyed leather. Another sold leather lace-up boots. One had a dazzling array of dried fruits and candies, while another had the freshest goat, sheep, and cow's milk cheese (I even got a sample!). One man wrote your name in Arabic letters. One booth sold miniature books. The most interesting (and tempting) booth was owned by one woman who sold her bakery goods by weight--there were chocolate-glazed donuts bigger than my face! And loaves of bread as large as an XL pizza in America! At the base of the castle there were a multitude of food and drink booths. At the center was a large fire-roaster, with chicken, sausages, pork, and vegetables. There was also a kebab stand (which we tried! It was delicious) and a cocktail booth. Plenty of seating for everyone to sit and eat their food. 

My favorite booth was owned by a woman who made glass beads and made beautiful jewelry out of them. She even demonstrated how she made beads with her little fireblower (not a technical term) and her sticks of glass. I ended up buying a beautiful ring from her!

I wish the Medieval Market lasted longer than three days. It's amazing to see the range of artisans and their wares, as well as to walk through slowly with everyone else in town around you.

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8: Get Used to Siesta

View from the 2nd floor

The famous 3-hour midday break known as siesta is sometimes everything you want it to be, and sometimes not. It really depends.

Studio ends at 14:00 (2PM) and lunch at the Pension is served. Lunch is a one- to two-hour affair, though, depending on the speed of the kitchen.* You get a first course (popular dishes are paella, cold meats with potato salad, vegetable omelette, tomato and grilled cheese, pasta) and a second course (I ate a lot of roast chicken, grilled salmon, Spanish kebab, and pork chops)--not to mention the salad, bread, garlic alioli before the first course. And the dessert or coffee afterwards (or dessert coffee in the form of cafe bombon, which is a shot of espresso poured over condensed milk). Don't eat all of it, though, because you might burst, and you need to save food for dinner! Everyone has Tupperware containers.

So by the time lunch is over, you have anywhere from two full hours to only an hour left to chill because studio resumes at 17:00 (5PM). You have to decide--should I drink this coffee now? Will it get cold in this Spanish midday heat? Do I have enough time to take a nap and not wake up groggy? If I don't take a nap, do I have enough time to do work? Or what? Or what?!

Yeah, that's the big important decision I've been making every day lately.

And it's true. It gets so hot here that it's absolutely exhausting. When I run in the morning at 6:30AM, it's already 25 degrees Celsius, which is 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Back in Berkeley, it hits 77F around midday, and you would not catch me trying to run down College Avenue. In Guardamar, it hits 98F around midday and the heat lasts well past 18:00 (6PM). So that is why the siesta exists here. Most shops close and no one is walking in the streets. It's best to just lie down, don't move, and let the ceiling fan blow air over you for a few hours.

*Edit August 27, 2012: Looking back, we went through so many different ways of ordering food! We went from everyone writing a tick mark next to their desired dishes, to family style (think large pans of 15 roast chicken legs and a huge pan of paella for everyone to share), to trying to number the tables and ordering by table... oh man.


- lunch at the Pension (pacing yourself, what to take to go)
- taking a break
- the heat!

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The Studio

We are finally in the studio! It's not like studio at Berkeley, though it is getting as dirty, which is normal for any space with a high concentration of architecture students. 

The studio space used to be a grocery store, so there are a lot of outlets for our laptops. There's little air circulation so we rely on lots of fans. Our work surfaces are large slabs of plywood on legs and some of our chairs are broken.

It works though. We are two blocks away from the Mercadona, so we will never starve! There's a cafe right across the street to feed our coffee addictions. The beach is also a mere four blocks to the east. 

What are we working on? We've diagrammed the weekly mercadillo, which is a traditional event in Guardamar. Most (older) people get their fresh produce from the market Wednesday mornings. The market sets up starting at 4AM and then is gone by 3PM. Our diagrams aren't infographics or anything that looks familiar--they're more "artsy" and based on our own experience of the mercadillo (keeping in mind personal feelings and historical references). We've also diagrammed our experiences climbing two different castles, one in Guardamar and one in Alicante. 

Our diagrams are on the mylar, which feels smooth to the touch and is a wonder to draw on with pencil. I was a little nerve-wracking the first time to just draw with our intuition, and we are just learning how to create diagrams in this new style, but we are all getting the hang of it. 

Diagrams on the first mylar

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6: Buy Things Abroad

One of the things I worried about before getting here was that I would run out of the things I need every day, like lotion, shampoo, deodorant, and so on. I had to remind myself that I wasn't going to a third world country, but I was still anxious.

Today was the first time we experienced the weekly market. It has been in existence for a very long time. Stalls began to set up at 4AM, and by 11:30AM, the several streets near the church, library, and ayuntamiento (city hall) are full of people! Here were peddlers of all the things that you need, y mas (and more). (As you can see, I've picked up a little bit of Spanish!)

Here are just a few of the many stalls (and there are multiple vendors for each product): dried fruits, fresh produce, nuts, ham, wallets, handbags, shoes, clothes, toiletries, candy, seat cushions, art, olives, fish, toys... I walked through the market five times to get a sense of the range of products and to compare prices. The cheapest produce (4 heads of lettuce for 1 euro, as well as 1 euro for a kilo of peaches) was a booth set up along the street that leads to the bus station. The booth with the most varied array of candy was set up by the library. And the nuts and dried fruits is right around the corner from the library!

So if I ever need anything, I'm going to check the market first because of its rich cultural history and its selection.

There are other stores as well. The perfumeria is like a drugstore, but only with personal hygiene and make-up products like shampoo, body spray, soap, et cetera. The pharmacies here have all health products and all have neon green + signs. I happened to find a health food store with everything from chia seeds, medicinal herbs, protein powder, gluten free foods, and unsalted nuts (it felt a little like Berkeley Bowl in there!). Every couple of blocks, there's a "Chino" store, which is usually a huge bazaar of goods (probably made in China)--I think of them as the Walmarts of Guardamar. I've purchased trace paper, tupperware, and a beach towel from such shops. The "no more than two euro" store is analogous to the Dollar Tree. Of course, the supermarket also stocks a lot of common household items like laundry detergent, ziplock bags, and so forth.

So I've learned that I didn't need to worry about finding the products I'm used to using in the States. The only thing is that it's slightly more expensive to buy common products here, and some things are a lot more expensive--a small bottle of sunscreen is about 8 euro, which is $10!

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5: Bring Comfy Shoes

It's hard to only pack two pairs of shoes for a two and a half month trip to Europe. But it's even harder to deal with bloody ankles and extra weight.

Our studio course finally met today for the first time. We were going on a walk, Alex said, so wear comfy shoes.

We hiked up to Guardamar's old castle, which is now in ruins; the old church behind it is now used as a water reservoir. The views of the sea to the East and the jagged mountains to the West were breathtaking and we welcomed the strong breeze. It was quite a hike just to the castle up steep streets and rocky paths. The worst was over, it seemed, once we got back down to street level.

...But the journey had only just begun!

The next couple of hours were spent trekking across the urban parts of town to the dunes by the sea. These huge sand dunes are now massive and unmovable, but just a century ago, they threatened to bury Guardamar's streets. Native pine trees and other flora were planted (and replanted annually) to prevent dune erosion and movement. After what seems like miles and miles of walking, we finally break out of the pine forest and head out to the mouth of the river. Rio Segura meets the Mediterranean sea on the Northern side of Guardamar. At this point, I am dreading the walk back.

We decide that following the beach would be the fastest way to get home. Our shoes come off as we begin to walk in the sand. I notice that a lot of people's ankles are bloody and several people complained of blisters.

I looked down at my feet--tired but unscathed--which already have tan lines on them... they're more like tan strips, actually. The sandals I brought are Tevas that I bought just for this trip after much research. Every step feels padded and the sandals stay secure on my feet. They have a lot of grip so that I don't slip on the shiny tiled sidewalks. The only other pair of shoes I brought are my running shoes--essential, and also comfortable. Truthfully, I envy everyone else's cute sandals, but at the end of the day, my feet are a thousand times better off in a pair of utilitarian Tevas. I'm glad I did my research and tried on several different pairs of sandals before finally buying Tevas.

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Home versus Feeling Homey

A lot has happened in the last few days. I’ve already spent a night in Guardamar del Segura! It’s been pretty easy to settle into the 3rd floor room that I share with Naomi, probably the smallest room in the Pencion—but we have a bathroom and a window that opens to a vacant space in the building. The low hum of the fan above lulled me to sleep last night even as our fellow studio-mates returned from bar-hopping and late-night beach-going.

It’s been so easy, in fact, to fall asleep here, that I wonder if my previous aversions to new places was because of some kind of fear that I’ve let go of, or if this place just feels like home. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a place home, versus what makes a place feel homey. There’s a difference.

I began my trip to Spain with a BART ride from Union City to San Francisco International Airport. BART feels like home simply because I've been taking trains around the Bay Area for as long as I can remember. Airport terminals, however, definitely do not feel homey. Every step I take is filled with consumerism--every corridor, every walkway has an ad, a duty-free store, an endless rack of magazines, ten different brands of gum... and all the items are marked up simply because I'm in an airport terminal. Home does not equate to everyone trying to sell me something every second that I'm there.

At Dusseldorf, we had to go through Passport Control--our passports were stamped with our arrival date and we were questioned about our travel plans. I thought that saying that I was studying abroad would be enough--and there was a language barrier, because I wasn't really sure what he was asking--but I ended up searching frantically for the Pencion's address before Naomi saved my ass! I can't help but think that I would have been allowed to go through the checkpoint with no problem if I weren't an Asian girl with weird hair and lots of moles on her face... but of course I'm more sensitive to these things than most people. That exchange with Passport Control gave me the impression that Germany was not a friendly place to be. (We did get to stay overnight at the airport Sheraton, though, because a delay on our Air Berlin flight into DUS caused us to miss our connecting flight. Score!)

Guardamar has proven itself to feel homey because of the residences atop the restaurants and stores that line the narrow streets, the slow pace of the people who reside here, and the generally happy and generous temperament of the people we have met so far (and will be in close contact with for the next couple of months). The culture here is completely different--the long hours dedicated to eating meals with other people (usually family) really shows that they care about taking it slow, keeping it personal, building relationships. I'm so used to eating lunch within 15 minutes that it felt a little weird sitting at a table for two hours... but with a glass of wine and (almost) endless amounts of food, I soon felt like I was eating with family.
My run this morning showed me a beach town asleep in the wee hours of the morning. Alex says that the population in Guardamar grows almost exponentially within the next month because so many people come here on holiday. It will be interesting to see the urban dynamics change and to compare them to my first impressions (as well as the first impressions I got of other cities in Europe).

My first impressions of Dusseldorf, Zurich, Alicante, and Guardamar color the way that I see them. But when does the period end for first impressions? If I come back to Guardamar every year or retire to little house near the beach (as Alex’s in-laws have), then my first impressions may span the first few years that I am here. If I’m only here for two months (which is much more likely), then my memories of Guardamar will always be affected by how I felt by the things I experience in my first week or so. Maybe it’s different for everyone, for every situation.

I wonder if Guardamar del Segura will become a home for me.

(That's a photo while flying into Alicante. Notice the Air Berlin wing and the beach down below.)

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I'm Here!

After a layover in a Sheraton in Dusseldorf, flying into Zurich, meeting the professor by chance in Alicante, eating a meal at the Pencion, wrangling with my outlet adapter, and seeting up an internet cafe account, I'm glad to say I'm now in Spain.

Checking out the beach later tonight!

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