Periana or bust

I was up pretty early today having planned to meet the director of my school's bilingual program in the plaza near my hostel. He was going to give me a ride to Periana so I could meet people I'd be working with and check out the school. I arrived responsibly early and joined the tourist throngs who gazed at the the pigeon poop encrusted obelisk in the center of the plaza that stood caddy-corner to Picasso's childhood home. I watched some dogs running after each other in circles, shifted from right foot to left, eyed a man who similarly seemed to be waiting to no avail, finally bought a phone card, finally asked a passerby to help me use the phone card, and responsibly left a message for said director. I waited a few minutes more before trekking back to my hostel to look up bus schedules. Old men named Jésus stand me up.

With a bit of assistance, I made it to the Málaga bus station and got into line to buy a ticket to Periana. Unfortunately, something had gone terribly wrong and the mousey figures behind the counter kept appearing and dissappearing through their little door, refusing to answer questions or even to talk to the increasingly irate non-Spanish-speaking man at the front of the line. It was finally disclosed that something was broken and the company couldn't print out any tickets. Those of us with soon-to-be-leaving buses were told to buy tickets on the bus, so I headed off to platform 39 since my bus was scheduled to leave in 15 minutes. The bus wasn't where it was supposed to be, though, so in trying to track it down I struck up a conversation with a woman looking for the same bus. I told her why I was going to Periana, and she assured me I'd fit right in.

When the bus finally arrived, the two of us went to buy our tickets from the driver, who promptly started screaming at us. Apparently the sky falls down if you try to buy a bus ticket from anywhere other than a ticket window. It didn't really seem to matter that we'd just been screamed at by the mousey woman at the ticket woman who thought my questions were not only inane but also offensive; this man was convinced we were out to kill his children. Somehow, though, the similarly ticketless woman managed to scream her way back, managing to get us onto the bus a few bizarre minutes later. Perplexed, I sat down. Fulminating, she kept screaming. She had considerately placed herself two rows behind the driver, and continued her shrill tirade to "no one in particular" as we pulled away from the station; as we rolled down the coast; as we wound our way into Rincón de la Victoria, the next town over; and even then she didn't stopped. In one of the most obnoxious voices I've heard in recent months, she fumed about the break down of public services, the mean-spirited driver, the personal blotch this created on her life trajectory. After awhile, I half tuned her out, at least until I heard her move into new territory, this time talking about the innocent victims harmed by such transportation travesties--victims such as American girls who have received scholarships to teach in small Andalucían towns, but are barred from actually carrying out their task because they aren't allowed on the bus. I sunk down in my seat. About twenty minutes later, after another short period of quiet, I heard the woman again, this time on her phone, complaining to some acquaintance. Raising her voice, she retold the story of the poor American scholarship girl, this time accentuating the details, sharpening her whine even more. I pressed my face against the window and wondered why the decidedly unpleasant bus driver didn't pull over and punch this woman in the face.

Two hours after getting on the bus, I stepped off in Periana. The town is beautiful. It's perched fairly high up in the Sierra Tejeda, northeast of Málaga. The region is dry and sparsely populated, except for the hillsides covered with olive trees that contribute to the area's famous olive oil. The road that leads there winds up from the coast, and every once in awhile a small town crops up with its white houses and red roofs clustered together and red flowers sticking their heads out of fences. Periana looks exactly like the town before it, and probably like the one after it, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. For all it's idyllic charm, though, it's very small and isolated.

I found my way to my school, and was greeted by the "concierge" who ushered me inside to meet Jesús, my no-show ride, and Luís, the other bilingual director. They were friendly enough, but as soon as they'd thrust a schedule and day planner in my hand, I was whisked back out the door and into Jesús' car for the windy ride back to Málaga (school had just ended at this point). Along the way, we broke the ice by establishing that I was decidedly anti-Bush, and that, one way or another, I would be voting absentee.