An unforgettable reunion

The next day, Tuesday, we awoke at last to a proper Spanish autumn morning, quite chilly but crispy and sunny. Today we are going to see Eva, one of my best and oldest of friends.

Eva and I met at primary school, we were only eight years old. During school, we were inseparable. Unfortunately, when we were sixteen, her family had to move to Madrid due to work. Despite this, we kept in contact and visited each other regularly.

It was only when I moved  to London in 1998 when our lives drifted apart and we didn’t hear from each other for a good fifteen years. But I have never forgotten her. For years, I googled her name on the internet unsuccessfully.

To my delight, last year, her name came up on LinkedIn, a professional network. This was quite a surprise because I didn’t think this network was that popular in Spain.

I emailed her and she responded almost straight away, the internet is amazing. We talked on the phone that weekend for over two hours. Life had treated her well, she sounded happy. She was married with two children and the third one was on the way. We vowed to visit each other soon but it sounded one of those promises that you know it is unlikely to keep. Logistically, it was always going to be quite difficult.

However, the opportunity came up when Gary and I decided to take this year off. With no work commitments, we could drive to Zaragoza and spend some time with them. That time was going to be today.

We were quite late in leaving. We had only forty minutes to drive across the city to meet up with Eva at her offices, a location we had discussed the day before. She had a meeting at 11.00 am and we didn’t want to make her late. We arrived just before that. The children wanted to see Dora, so she had arranged for us to park her in a garage adjacent to her building. It was a big warehouse and Dora fitted nicely in the corner. She would be safe for the day while we did some sightseeing before meeting up properly with Eva again in the afternoon.

When we saw each other we hugged, we laughed, we hugged once more. We couldn’t believe it, we were together again! . It was brief. Eva left for her meeting. Our reunion would continue later.

She works for the Spanish Government. This means convenient working hours and no overtime so her working day ends at 15.00 (lucky her!).

We left to see El Pilar, Zaragoza’s cathedral.

We are not fans of old architecture but it is almost compulsory to visit this building when you are in Zaragoza. Gary is going to write a short post about religious architecture shortly .

This building is quite famous and important in Spain, to the extent, that the 12th of October is the ‘El Pilar’ day, a national bank holiday. On this day, Spain also celebrates the discovery of America by Cristobal Columbus.

In the same square, a modern intervention caught our attention. A sculpture, a fountain, the water runs down a big ramp made of light brown stone. I imagine this would be really cooling in summer. I liked the fact that this modern design was close to an old building, the cathedral.

We walked along the river Ebro, the river that carries the most water. It is born in Cantabria, north of Spain and ends on the Atlantic coast in Portugal, like the majority of the biggest Spanish rivers.

Quite a modern and simple bridge over the river.

Next on our itinerary was the Palacio de la Aljafería, a fort built in Zaragoza at the end of the eleventh century and where these days, the Cortes de Aragon (the body governing the County) have set up the headquarters. This building was started when Muslims ruled Spain and therefore it is in the Islamic tradition, although since then, it has been modified many times. The most recent of which is a modernist piece of architecture which houses the Aragon government.

You see, you can put modern architecture adjacent to ancient buildings in a sensitive way, without copying them and trying to pretend they were of the same era.

This is a new building, with a new purpose within an ancient setting. GDR

I also really like the laying here, the arches and porticos with the stairs behind, but all very transparent. Very beautiful. GDR

When I do sightseeing, I like to know about the place I see, therefore we always rent an audio tour which we would tell us about the history of the place during the visit . However, on this occasion, I felt the narratives recorded on the audio were a big chaotic and out of order, the commentator jumped backwards and forwards in time. He also talked about sculptures and paintings that were not in the palace, but held in other buildings around Zaragoza. It was incredibly difficult to follow and confusing.

This was such a shame because we were really liking the building.

We like the open courtyard, it is quite cool, the sound of trickling water is very calming. Islamic style, symmetric, with square gardens on each side and the fresh water running in the middle.

We ended up spending ages here, although it wasn’t that big. Only one hour before we meet Eva!. We needed to find a local restaurant for a quick lunch.

We popped in one of the bars in front of the Palacio. Surprisingly, the menu was incredibly cheap; €2.00 average for ‘raciones’ (big tapas) and €6.00 average for ‘platos combinados’ (a few tapas combined together in one dish which makes it the size of a main course).

We stepped inside. A traditional Spanish bar except that it was run by a young Chinese couple Weird?  Even Gary laughed at my reaction. “I thought you had seen it all” he exclaimed. Yes, he was right. I was surprised because the Chinese couple was serving traditional Spanish food. I was even more surprised to see that the bar seemed to be packed with locals.

Things are definitely changing in Spain. The proof is in the pudding (traditional English saying) so what was the food like? We had a ‘plato combinado’. It did not taste homemade food, more like supermarket food heated up. That probably explained the low price. It filled the hole, though.

It was 15.00, time to see Eva. There she is, waiting for us, smiling, we were both looking forward to spend the rest of the day together. She hadn’t eaten, and thought we hadn’t either. Shame, we could have waited for her. I bet any place she had taken us, would have been much better than our choice.

A local cafe, she had some tapas, Gary and I had some coffee. It is now when we could talk about how life has treated us all these years. She is happily married, coincidentally also to an architect, with three adorable children, one of them, Gonzalo, sixteen months old. She has always been very bright. Her English was proficient at the time and it still is. Although she apologised she hadn’t used it for years, she spoke in English most of the time to engage Gary in the conversation. Not many people do.

After one and a half hour of non-stop talking, it is time to pick the kids from school. Nacho, her husband, is waiting for us outside. On a normal day, Eva would pick Gonzalo and the children up from school. That day, Nacho had left the office early to look after Gonzalo for her so she would be able to spend more time with us. Very sweet and considerate.

Gonzalo is calmly asleep in his pushchair “Make the most of it while it lasts”, Nacho said. I was so looking forward to see the rest of her family. Nacho is adorable. He, as well, spoke in English most of the time with Gary. They got on well, I guess they had lots of things in common, especially professionally.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in the school. Like every Tuesday, the eldest child, Nacho (same name as his father) had basketball training. Whilst waiting for him, we spent the time catching up on old times and finding out what each of us had been doing with our lives. A really relaxed hour.

“You don’t need to be here with us”, she said. “Please go and see more of Zaragoza, you don’t have many chances to come here”. Exactly, I thought. I don’t have many chances to see you. We are happy to sit here, watching what she does on a normal day, meeting her friends, some of them, quite close, like her and I used to be at the time. I feel this afternoon that I am part of her life again, after so many years.

Basketball training finished, time to move on. What next? Nacho invited us to his studio. What a good idea.

Nacho, Gary and I went up, whilst Eva stayed downstairs looking after the kids. His office, a typical architect’s practice, had five people working in it, including him. They have one main project in Aragon at the moment. In addition they have a few planning jobs in the Government of the Basque country, which surprisingly, paid much better than those in Aragon. Spanish architects, it seems, are still really suffering. They have not yet recovered from the property bubble which severely affected the country in 2008.

On the way to their flat, Eva stopped in a cake shop to buy the dessert and a present for us. Guess what? the Trenza de Almudevar. Gary was quite happy, as we suspected we were going to get another one from auntie Vito as we always do (and we were right!). So sweet.

The children are now quite excited as they are getting closer to Dora. We open the door, they jump into it quickly. “It is true, it is Dora”, they exclaimed. Now, they can put a name to the motorhome they have only seen so far online. Here we have lovely memories having a few drinks and some dried fruit as snacks in Dora’s living room.

Dinner is absolutely delicious, borrajas POST soup for starter and savoury small pastries as a main course, all of course, accompanied with good white wine from the region.

The chat during dinner is incredibly pleasant and enjoyable. So far, it has not been one of those reunions where people only remember the past. We don’t need to recall the old days to have something to talk about. We can chat about anything; life, work, travel, kids. I look at her when she talks. Time doesn’t seem to have gone by. We still seem to share the same views and values in life.

Our friendship has not been affected after so many years being apart. This is when you realise who is still a good lifetime friend.

The evening was perfect, it was just too short. I wish I could have spent more time with her. Next time.

They have promised to come to London to visit us. Of course, not before September next year. We still have to finish our year’s travels!

Sadly, it was time to go, some people had work to go to the next day. Gary had also enjoyed their company too. Contented and pleased I left, feeling incredibly lucky of having her as a friend.

SM.