Àger

One of the best ways to experience a new place is to stay with somebody who lives there. You don’t have to pay for accommodations or food, you don’t get lost, and you have a local to show you all the best places.

This is especially true in places that don’t necessarily cater to tourists. For example, if you want to experience local life in a small town rather than see the sights in a big city, there is really no other way to do it. The difficult thing is, though, you can’t just hire somebody to show you around. You have to know people.

Making friends anywhere takes awhile, especially in a new country and a foreign culture. I have been lucky to have found the choir and church early on here, but making Catalan friends has been more difficult due to the age gap in Andorra and the somewhat closed culture here (typical of Catalans, but more so with Andorrans who are particularly suspicious of foreigners). Most of my “local” friends have been my roommates, only one of which has an Andorran passport, though he actually grew up in Cataluyna.

Anyway, the roommate I have connected with the most is Neus, a statistician from Barcelona. She is newer to Andorran than I am (only two months), so we often do things together. On the weekends, though, she usually goes to Barcelona or to see her family in their poble or village.

So this weekend, instead of staying in Andorra, Neus invited me to come to the poble, Àger, with her. This is where her maternal grandparents live, where her mom grew up, and where their family usually spends weekends. With only about 300 residents everybody knows each other, and I met many of them including Neus’ friends, brother, parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle, great aunt, cousins, and her cousins’ grandparents. Her cousins’ crazy grandmother had recently given them two new quads for their first communion. No, this is not a normal gift, especially to an 8 and 9 year old who can’t legally drive them until they are 16. Neus said traditionally they would get something like a cross necklace. Everyone except her dad (from Salamanca) speaks Catalan, though with me they would speak Spanish… with a thick Catalan accent (especially her grandparents). Her grandpa was very enthusiastic about showing me all of his old photos, medals, books, and tourist brochures. He fought in the Spanish civil war against Franco and I think he was in some sort of work or concentration camp for awhile. Neus is helping him write down all of his experiences. We also went with him to his corral where he has chickens, doves, two dogs, and tons and tons of cats. Imagine feeding the pigeons at the park… now substitute them with cats. I also got to drive the quad.

While all of his information about the war reminded me of Grandpa Gordy, Grandpa Clio wasn’t forgotten either. We were at a bar with one of Neus’ friends from the village and he was wearing a shirt that said “I love red Clio.” His friends made it for him after a summer of driving to all of the festas majors (town festivals) in his car, which is a clio. He got a kick out of the fact that his car and my grandpa share a name.

Neus took me around the town, to the main bar, and to the castle. She couldn’t find the keys and we were unsuccessful at scaling the wall. Hubert, Neus’ boyfriend, joined us on Saturday and we took a hike through a canyon separating Catalunya from Aragon. Sometimes the trail was carved directly out of the rock. There were lots of poppies and green paisaje. At the top of the pass we could see the astronomy observatory and plenty of parasailors (parapente). It was also her brother’s birthday on Sunday so we had apple cake, but there was plenty of good food throughout the weekend… tortilla made from fresh eggs and freshly picked asparagus, fresh enciam, fideos (a Catalan pasta, like short spaghettis) with saffron, shrip, peas, and mussles… similar to paella except fideos instead of rice, freshly baked coca, fuet sandwiches with tomato, loma and cheese sandwiches, and a Chinese restaurant in Lleida.

On Saturday night there was the festa major in Lleida (Lerida in Spanish), so we drove down, had dinner, and went to the festa (not to mention about an hour looking for parking). We sat down to dinner about 11:00, and the restaurant was still full. Then we arrived at the festival around 1:00, and it was still full. Imagine the Puyallup fair on a smaller scale, no animals, but more smoke, beer, and open-air concerts. Things started emptying out around 4 and we made it back to Àger around 5.

Very good weekend.