Málaga

June 8th to 13th, 2015

After coming back to Vienna from Slovenia, early in the morning I caught a bus from the Vienna airport to the Bratislava airport in Slovakia en direction to Malaga, SPAIN. Going towards more sunny hot weather.

My cousin, Mathilde was in Malaga for a couple weeks for a Spanish language immersion with the Education First (EF) school. Both in Europe, must meet up ;)!!

I bumped into some trouble transitioning from German to Spanish... Sentences came slowly to me as I tried not to say German things anymore, but coming out of the airport the I thanked the first person to help me with directions with "Danke" instead of "Gracias" (facepalm)... Slowly but surely I got used to it, except some people's accents were harder to understand than others. The real problem was finding my Airbnb with 8% battery on my phone and my host not speaking any English while trying to give directions to her apartment. I would hang up quickly not to lose my battery but I misread the street the apartment was on. I squatted at a bakery where the clerk let me use the power to charge my phone. We had a pretty good conversation about her life and mine and the places we've travelled to, so that was a good warm up for getting into Spanish again. Of course, I let her do most of the talking... From the moment I figured out where to go for my Airbnb everything went much smoother.

I visited Mathilde's amazing education house place where they had a better room, bathroom and kitchen than I had in Strasbourg my my. I got to meet her classmates. Their origins ranged from Sweden. Switzerland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria as well as many Americans and surprisingly Quebecers! It felt like exchange all over again. I once again jumped on the opportunity to speak German haha...

I was so busy having fun, I really didn't take many pictures and all the days kinda meshed into one blob in my head, so here are the highlights.

The Malaga Cathedral: quite fantastic from the inside but I don't think we were allowed to take pics

The BEEEEEACH

Let's go to the beach-beach, let's go get away

Spanish Cosmo (not really as interesting as the American one weirdly)

There is so much going on with this ice cream sandwich 

I was out for 4 hours that day. Tanning for like 3 :S (aaaaagh skin cancer) and then playing beach volleyball and swimming. I had intense tan lines at the end of that day

To cut on costs, we got to eat in a lot. The kitchen was well equipped and the grocery store food was really cheap. These girls were hilarious and energetic :) I'm happy they let me in their group for the week! I forgot how it was to speak full on Quebecer until I interacted with these beauties haha.

Gazpacho :) on my single city exploration

in front of the palace (I think, oh gosh, this was a while ago)

 

view of the stadium

view of the port

hahahah all the corrections to the translations....

view of the cathedral

A façade of the old Acazaba

must eat paella in Spain ;)

Shopping with the cousin on Marqués de Larios

The best trips are the ones that can be shared with people you care about as well as great new acquaintances. My cousin still sees her Malaga classmates in Montreal. I'm happy the bond they built continued back in Montreal. I haven't been fortunate to have made Montrealer friends on my trips... However, I think I was avoiding it because I was more concentrated on getting to know people from Europe. Friendships I still cherish ;) If everything goes well, I will be back in Germany in Summer 2016 to see my closest European friends!