Small Town Life

One of the intriguing things about La Prada was that it was a village of only twenty people and the smallest town I'd ever lived in had about 1.5 million. But the more that we travel, the more we find that every city is essentially the same and it really isn't until you get out into nature and the towns that the people and the places really differ that greatly from one another.

So lets start with the people of our small town; firstly, the other WWOOFers. We arrived late at night after a rather strenuous day of travel (early morning train from Utrecht to Frankfurt, bus to airport two hours away, flight to Santender, bus to town thirty minutes from airport, bus two more hours to Trespaderne where we were picked up by Iñigo and driven the 15 minutes to La Prada - oh, and we lost our Euro cell phone en route) to a house full of volunteers who, lucky for us, already had some food prepared for us. There was Glen, a homeopath from New Zealand who'd been living in England for ten years, as well as a small family of Helen and Mark, plus their almost-two-year-old son, Tai, who was a surprise to us (as well as, we would learn, them). We also met Iñigo's wife, Ana, and their six month old, Martin.

Now that you have the basic cast of characters, let's explain our living situation a bit: all the WWOOFers shared a house adjoining Iñigo and Ana's own place - a stone house that was over 200 years old and recently renovated. The level we were on was comfortable and very livable, but the level above us was falling apart and uninhabited for probably at least 20 years. But again, we were happy. Our room was modest, but with a comfy bed, an elegant armoire, and a nice window onto the town square and we shared the common areas (i.e. kitchen and bathroom) with the others. The kitchen was pretty interesting because we soon realized we had no refrigerator. But hey, people have been living sans electric appliances for thousands of years so we figured we could do it for a few weeks. And we definitely could preserve food as the one drawback to the house was that it was, pardon my French, tres cold all the time. We were always wearing sweatpants and long shirts inside no matter the temperature outdoors.

Speaking of the outdoors, there was a lot to see and do in the Valle de Tobalina in which we were staying. Our first day there, we went to see a waterfall in Pedrosa and had a picnic lunch on the top of the falls. Then a hike the 6km back to La Prada through some gorgeous farmland and tiny villages. La Prada itself also had some beautiful scenery, including the church you see in the first picture of this blog.



We were actually let into this church twice, for two very special occasions. The first was the town's yearly festival where the Virgin of Calleros blesses the fields for the growing season to come. This was supposed to be held at another church up the hill but the torrential downpour forced us to relocate to the church in town where we heard our first Spanish mass. But the rains couldn't dampen the spirits of the band, nor of Helen and Tai who you see dancing in the corner of the video.



After the mass, there was a little bite to eat in the town's bar - which, by the way, was always closed but could be opened whenever we felt like it by asking the woman who lived in the green house up the road as she had the key. There, the appetizers of cheese, ham, and tortillas were literally wolfed down by the old ladies which embarrassed Iñigo as they just grabbed at everything. So we didn't get much there, but not to worry - we were then invited to the house of Elena, a neighbor and old friend of Iñigo's to eat. After the meal, everyone gathered in the living room and played music for a couple hours. Here are two videos from it - Ana on flute and Iñigo on something like an accordion (but I forget the name) and then a friend on the Basque bagpipes. After the music came the games. We moved back outside (where it had stopped raining) and the kids all played bolos, a game like bowling that we got to play ourselves a few days later.



The second time we entered the church was at the end of our stay and this time it was for the first baptism in the town in forty years - that of Elena's daughter, Elenita. This was pretty interesting, most notably because everyone was relieved the priest didn't say anything too strange - something he is apparently known for.

Anyway, bolos. At the Calleros festival, we befriended one of Elena's older daughters, Marina, and a couple of her friends who were good to practice Spanish with. They came by a couple days later looking to play some football with Glen and myself. We happily obliged and, when the game died down, stayed out with the rest of the town that turned up to play bolos. We still don't really understand the scoring, but basically, you throw a huge wooden ball at wooden pegs set up on a court, trying to knock down as many as possible. How you get points is fairly straightforward, but how you win is anyone's guess. Still, it was really fun and Manolo, the town mayor, bought us all beers so double bonus.

We took a day trip into Medina de Pomar with Helen and Mark to see another festival, but it was pretty weak - not much going on. We did, however, stumble upon a little community performance outside of a church, which included sword dancing, so that was cool. And the town itself was beautiful: huge old towers, interwoven trees, ad an obnoxious guy who kept setting off rockets.

The town we visited the most, however, was Quintana Martina Galindez, a town about 7km from La Prada where they had free Spanish lessons every Monday and Tuesday. The lessons were mainly for Bulgarian immigrants (they have a lot in the region who come for farming) but are free for anyone. The first lesson was pretty good, but there was a sharp decline after that as our teacher spoke ridiculously fast Spanish, insisted that we were good enough at Spanish that we didn't need the classes (even though we could never really understand her when she spoke), and then gave us exercises for complete beginners (like, for example, going over the alphabet). Weird. So we stopped going to those but continued to go to Quintana as they had the closest market as well as free internet access. We generally got rides into town with either Glen or Iñigo, but also found that it's a really easy bike ride into town - though a bit harder to climb back out. But the journey is incredibly scenic and really exhilarating on the way into town.

Also, lest you think our Spanish is terrible given the above, let me assure you all that we vastly improved during our time on the farm, thanks, in large part, to Inma (the redheaded woman in the foreground), one of the permanent workers on the finca (the other was Felix). Inma is also a screenwriter and we got to see a short film made from one of her scripts which was pretty cool. But she's extremely lively and animated and talkative and doesn't really speak English, so we got to practice a lot whenever she was around. We also learned a lot of interesting farm vocabulary and can now say the names of most vegetables and farm equipment in two languages.

Inma also volunteered to give us a lift into Bilbao one afternoon after work as she was going anyway. We had planned to go earlier for a weekend, but I got sick so we pushed it back. Things ended up working out in the end and we got to see a bit of the old town, wander the new town, and explore the Guggenheim Museum while there, complete with huge guard dog made out of flowers. The museum was really interesting, but we were rushed a bit as it closed early. Still, we got to see some good modern art and an especially interesting exhibit on Surrealism - the the architecture itself is still the main draw of the building. Oh, and the drive to Bilbao itself was again stunningly beautiful, filled with crumbling castles, dramatic cliffs, and vistas of pristine forest and farmland. A perfect day trip.

We took one other day trip, this time with Glen, to the medieval town of Frias in the Valle de Tobalina. This was unexpectedly awesome. We'd heard that it was "OK" from Mark and Helen, but Frias was pretty amazing, as you might be able to tell from its spectacular mountaintop setting. We wandered the streets, explored the castle walls, marveled at all the medieval homes still standing, and grabbed the obligatory beer. A good day.

This post is getting a little out of control - there was just so much that we did while there. Let's just list a few more things quickly and without the detail they deserve: learned how to make paneer cheese from Glen, met Daniel and Camille (the new WWOOFers once the others left), played spoons with Ana and her friends who are involved with a community theater project and let us watch them practice for their upcoming performance, learned how to make delicious stews from Glen and tasted incredible tortas Ana baked, showed off the farm to prospective clients - then partied afterward with them, played lots of Risk, rewatched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, brainstormed and wrote 60 pages of our script, and, of course, played with the kittens.

Two days before we arrived on the farm, Trusky, Ana and Iñigo's cat, gave birth to two kittens so we got to watch them grow and play with them for the first month of their lives, though we did think it best to wait until they opened their eyes before really handling them. One girl and one boy, the girl started off much more adventurous and outgoing whereas the boy would scream whenever you touched him and get his mother to come running. But things changed dramatically the day that Trusky decided it was time the kittens learned how to walk down the steps. The girl tumbled down about six steps and became much more shy and timid after that while the boy really opened up when he found he could move up and down the steps without too much difficulty - though he was still whining pretty loudly for the first hour of the ordeal. And both kittens loved to climb up our pant legs once they started venturing off their protective blanket/bed. We would take them into the room and play with them on our bed, eat with them on our laps, basically take them everywhere we could because they were just so cute. So here is a brief kitten photo (and video) essay/homage in chronological order of their lives:






















I guess that's about it. We loved our time in La Prada and would highly recommend it to anyone at all interested in learning about farming - or anyone just interested in checking out small town life in Spain (as there are many rural hotels in the area). But for anyone interested, please do not hesitate to ask any more questions and we'll do our best to answer/get you in contact with Iñigo if you are interested in working. We had a great time and were very sad to leave, but leave we must as it was time to head to Barcelona to meet our friends living there and kick off the Euro 2008 Championships...