Flamenco

The Jerez-Seville axis is an important region in Andalucía for contributing to the development of flamenco. Indeed, Seville considers itself the heart of flamenco. Yet Jerez’s Judería, the maze of back streets in the gypsy quarter where flamenco grew, was completely quiet. I couldn’t find any flamenco at all.

In Seville I could have gone to any of several flamenco shows put on for tourists—many of which charge €30-€50—but I was looking for something authentic. When I was last in Seville, I went to a little bar called El Tamboril hidden in the corner of the quiet Plaza de Santa Cruz, where I found one of the locals with a guitar and another singing. It was deep, genuine, impromptu flamenco. I headed back again this time but found it closed on Thursday night. I returned on Friday and again on Saturday, and the door never opened. It must have shut down; a real shame.

I tried another place recommended by my Rough Guide to Andalucía, an excellent resource on flamenco, but I found instead a small group playing chamber music. In any case, the place was so hot and stuffy with the hundreds of bodies crammed in there that I wouldn’t have been able to last.

So, in the end, I travelled to the other side of the world to the heartland of my favourite genre of music and was unable to see any.

(Cue Shizuka’s howl of disappointment.)

The bureaucracy of buying tickets

Here is a not unusual example of queuing for a ticket in Andalucía. At the Jerez train station, there are three ticket windows, one of which is open. To be served, you take a number. I pull 480. The number currently being served is 449. My ticket says it will be about a forty minute wait, yet there are no more than five people in front of me. Where are the thirty people holding the intervening tickets?   After fifteen minutes, the number being served ticks over to 450, and one person advances to the counter.

There is a line on the floor marked with the words Espere su turno—wait your turn. The Spanish word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.”

I used the automatic ticketing machine.

The Quest for Tea

Spaniards are drinkers of coffee, not tea, but in the ancient land of the Moors you can find teterías, Moroccan-style tea houses bedecked in tilework, ottoman cushions and rugs. They are more a commercial conceit than a vestige of culture, but are nevertheless mini Meccas for the deprived tea lover.

When I learned about the Salon de Té Al-Zahra in Ronda, which offers over a hundred different teas, I made a beeline. A darkened series of low-ceilinged rooms with red walls, the décor was cozy but the air was smoky and hot. There’s no ventilation in these deep old buildings, and non-smoking establishments are a very non-European idea (though France is apparently catching on). Since recovering from this flu, if I spend the evening in a smoky restaurant – which is inevitable in Spain if you want to eat – I spend the night coughing myself to sleep. But after two weeks of abstinence, I’ll do anything for a decent pot of tea.

In Jerez de la Frontera, the Tetería La Jaima has very high ceilings and is much better ventilated. Even the hookahs they have on the menu are barely noticeable. The teapots come in three sizes, and I ordered a grande, which typically serves four or five people. The waitress double-checked, thinking my Spanish must be bad.

“Grande? Por uno solo? Es mucho mucho.”

“Si,” I smiled.

It was served in a decorative brass teapot and filled my glass a dozen times.

Unpredictably, the most pleasant tea house I’ve found in Europe is in the medieval Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic. After seating yourself under a large tree in the garden, the bearded waiter in flowing pantaloons brings a hundred-kind menu of black, green and white teas, with milk or lemon, spiced with cinnamon, anise, roses, or even chocolate, and a little brass bell. You while away the day in the shade of the tree, and whenever you want another pot of tea, you just ring the bell.