Int. Travel: The Big Easy

The Moorish streets of Granada, Spain are alive with a new Bohemian rhapsody. Simon Rowe gets into the rhythm of Andalucia's laid-back city.

In Costa Rica, a typical exchange between friends on the street might begin with the greeting "Pura vida?" which loosely means "Are you livin' the sweet life?" In southern Spain, there is no need for such words. The "sweet life" goes without saying. And no more so than in the old Moorish city of Granada, eight hours by train south of Madrid, where life bustles to a rhythm far more subdued than in many other big European cities.
"Welcome to Spain's Big Easy," an old barfly I met hunched over a glass of some unknown concoction said on my first night in town. He explained that the many fountains, ponds and subterranean watercourses, built by Moors centuries ago and still criss-crossing the city, keep tempers cool during the long torrid summers, but what I think he really meant to say is that the booze is cheap. Indeed, many believe that it's Granada's 20,000-strong university student population, coupled with the enormous number of bars, cafés and live music venues scattered about the labyrinthian streets that keep the city's spirits youthful, laid-back and wonderfully intoxicating.

The cup runneth over
"Laid-back" was too strong a word to describe the mobs of red-eyed students ordering hairs-of-the-dog outside Las Cuevas (The Caves), a small bar on Caldereria Nueva Street in the city center. Saturday's hangovers were being thawed with afternoon sunshine and copious ca–as (pronounced "can-yahz"), shot glass-sized draught beers, tossed back to the accompaniment of brassy Jamaican ska music.

Las Cuevas is popular not for its cheap drinks alone (bottle beer costs ¥150), but also for its location on the edge of the Albaicin, a hillside district reputed to be the largest and most distinctive Moorish quarter left in Spain. It's jokingly referred to as the place of "women, wine and water." Streets like Aljibe de Trillo (Trillo Water Tank Street), Calle del Agua (Water Street) and Plaza Aqua are so narrow in places that you are forced to duck and dive in and out of doorways to allow cars to pass, while the white-washed houses either side of them bear women's names like "Carmen," "Marcella" and "Maria" on their painted tiles.

As for wine, there is no shortage at the groovy Taberna El 22, a stone's throw up the hill from Las Cuevas, and opposite the 16th-century Iglesia de San Gregorio church. Whether you stand at the tiny inside counter with its upside-down flower pot lamps swinging dangerously overhead, or take a rickety table on the sloping terrace outside, EL 22 is the perfect nook from which to swill a rough rioja and scope out the Albaicin's passing throngs.

The movable feast never let up as I sat nursing mine; French-speaking tourists with big blue hair-dos, shaggy teenagers with north-American accents, drunk gypsies and wild-eyed vagrant types—the whole world seemed to be flowing into and out of the neighborhood. At one point, a man burst from a side street on a farting Vespa, dismounted and borrowed a chair from a nearby bar, then to the accompaniment of his classical guitar, performed a sorrowful Andalucian song that peaked each time he rapped his palm over the guitar's battered body. Buried in his sunburned head were eyes as glassy as polished snooker balls—a look you see a lot in the Albaicin, which is home to Spain's largest gypsy enclave.

For artists' sake
Gypsies of another kind can be found lurking on Caldereria Nueva Street where half a dozen Arab cafés squeeze between jewelry ateliers and kebab shops. "Granada is the new Bohemian capital of Europe," said Per Haegh Henriksen, a Danish artist I met inside La Flor del Te, a teahouse styled on a Moroccan souk. "It's a very open-minded city, unpretentious and accepting of all types of people, and the students who come from all over Spain and Europe bring with them a fantastic mixture of ideas and artistic expression."
Henriksen came to Granada ten years ago, found his groove within the easy-going lifestyle and decided to stay. He now earns a modest income as a writer-designer for an artists co-operative, and spends his nights hopping from café to bar handing out bookmarks inscribed with a poem, and collecting a couple of hundred pesetas off those customers who want to keep them.
Business is good for Henriksen in places like Cafe Dar Zizyab, at Caldereria Nueva St. 11, where you can lounge in dimly lit alcoves filled with cushions and its highly caffeinated clientele—mainly students and travelers—are looking for mementoes to bring home with them from Granada; though next day memories may be blurred on account of Dar Zizyab's tobacco menu.

For 800 pesetas (¥542) you can puff on a meter-high hookah pipe, a contraption that looks a lot like a kit-set toy rocket with an inhaling tube attached and arrives at your table with a pellet of smoldering apple or honey tobacco set on top.
With my lungs badly in need of a cleansing brew, I headed across to Kasbah, at Caldereria Nueva St 4, where funky north African hip-hop and spicy-smelling beverages are the order of the day, and customers can pull up a stool beneath walls decorated with old Bedouin musket rifles and goat skin lamps. Its tea menu reads like the index of an atlas: Algerian, Bangladeshi, Bedouin, Libyan, Nepalese, Pakistani, and the list rolls on.

Around midnight a massive electrical storm rolled down from Granada's Sierra Nevada mountains, pounding the rooftops of the Albaicin and sending mobs of bar-hopping students scurrying between watering holes with sodden newspapers for protection. At Cafe Central, on Calle de Elvira Street, waiter Antonio Lopez-Luna was taking a positive view of the tumultuous weather: "Granada's spring weather reflects the temperament of my customers—some days fiery, other days languid." he smiled, splashing wine in my glass.

He might have been talking about the patrons of Cafe-Bar Boabdil, across the street. "Tinto! tinto!" (red wine! red wine!), the wee-hour drinkers were clamoring. To appease them, the barman tossed more glasses onto the bar and poured along the line without lifting the bottle once, while from the kitchen out back, an endless stream of tapas—small dishes of succulent spicy snails, marinated tripe, pan-fried chicken and fish served on hot, greasy bread—flowed along the counter. Slurping his portion of callos pecante (tripe in spicy sauce) and between gulps of red wine, one seasoned sozzler turned and gave me a beaming smile full of chilli peppers and onions.
Despite that lasting image, I returned the next morning to Boabdil for a coffee and bocadillos—mini baguettes stuffed with dried ham and cheese. A short, moon-faced man sidled up to the counter and offered me a sip of his coffee. Served in a short glass and spiked heavily with brandy, he had ordered what is locally known as a "carajilla" and is guaranteed to leave a smoking hole where your head should be.
"It is dangerous to be drinking alone in Spain," he said. "Yes," I replied, "but it's more dangerous to be drinking carajillas at this hour of the morning."

Getting there
Granada is a bit of a trek from Tokyo, necessitating generally two connections. Air France (Tel: 03-3475-1511, English) flies daily to Paris, where you can catch a connecting flight to Barcelona or Madrid, where you then board a domestic Iberian Airlines flight to Granada. KLM (Tel: 03-3216-0771, English) also flies daily to Amsterdam, with similar connections.

More information
The Internet and travel agencies have a wealth of English information on Granada. Some excellent sites offering advice on accommodations, restaurants and entertainment are www.andalucia.com/cities/granada and www.eel.es/granada/gruk
Spain has a tourist office in Tokyo at, Toranomon Denki Bldg, 3-1-10 Toranomon, Minato-ku. Tel: 03-3432-6141/2. You can also contact the Municipal de turismo, Avenida de Europa s/n, Palacete la Najarra, Almu–ecar, Granada, Spain, 18690. Tel: (34) 5863-1125.

Photo credit: Simon Rowe

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