(insert title here)

Silence.

That is last weekend in a word. It was a welcome interruption. To understand where I am coming from, consider some parts of a “noisy” Spanish society.

Scene 1: The café.

Most often there are multiple TVs, which are always on and tuned to different channels. There is always music in the background. The coffee machine is constantly whirling at high pitches, interrupted by the banging of excess coffee grinds into the garbage for every cup ordered. Servers yell orders to each other across the room. A slot machine makes mechanical noises in the corner. Conversations and heated debates arise from every table. A quiet café is something that needs to be sought. Still, I might make a small disclaimer. Though many of the noise elements are present in my host family’s café, it is about as quiet as a Spanish café can be. For this, I am extremely thankful. I think it is possibly part of their Zen.

Scene 2: The piso.

Though I suspect my living situation might be a lot quieter than most, considering no pets and no siblings, the environment is still innately Spanish. Between the constantly bickering Spanish couple upstairs and the yippy dog that thinks he is a bloodhound downstairs, even my bedroom does not offer the wanted escape. I have never met any of these people, but every day I hear their lives play out through the paper-thin walls. Add in a bagpiper who practices every siesta into the courtyard. Then there are the noises of the street below: sirens from a nearby hospital and impatient drivers honking at an unreasonable frequency and duration. An added bonus lately has been the campaign cars driving around all day with megaphone speakers playing political ads.



Sometimes I just feel bombarded. Though I am sure my environment back in the States comes with its own noises, I never have felt so overwhelmed by sounds. Perhaps the noise in combination with nearly complete immersion in a language I only have learned over the past 3 months just wears me down. I am a person who needs complete silence every once in a while.

Then last weekend happened. It was a weekend spent in the beautiful mountains of Northern Spain. It was absolutely beautiful. I think I would have found it so even without sight. I didn’t find the silence until Saturday night. I was playing cards with 3 others in a dimly lit room around a crackling fire at the most perfect little hotel. There was a TV, but it wasn’t on. Voices were hushed. There were only a handful of other guests, all of which were not seen or heard. We were in a town so small it existed without a market. No cars, no sirens, not even lights.

We did two hikes over two days. The first day’s was up a small mountain (more like a rolling hill when compared to day 2) to a gorgeous pasture with a stream and cave. The second day we headed to the Picos de Europa, a national park in the heart of Asturias. We took a 7-hour hike that ascended about a mile up to the top of a mountain. I have done nothing of the sort in 3 years. It felt so good, but was so incredibly difficult. Most of the time we were not following a path, but two colored lines on the occasional rock. The challenge was all forgotten when we got to the summit, overlooking an amazing valley. What I wasn’t expecting was the wind at the top. It was so powerful that it took me off my feet a couple of times while I was unaware. My feelings were a mixture of incredible awe and extreme fear as we looked off the edge of a cliff with this wind against our faces. It was majestic. How amazing it was to be surrounded by the absence of man and man-made structures, to view nothing but natural purity. That is a silence in and of itself.



The weekend passed too quickly. This week it was back to the noise. Back to anticipating final exams that start in December, planning a trip to Italy next week, applying for scholarships and internships back home.

Tranquility has been lost.