On the Road

On the Road. The coach from Lisbon to Madrid took about eight hours it left at eleven at night; it was full and I had the misfortune sitting beside a huge, black Arab who sat talking to himself when not talking into his mobile phone. The bus arrived at six in the morning – one hour difference between Portugal and Spain, but it felt much longer. Madrid is famed as a city of art but the bus terminal is not one of them… middle aged and old man were milling about and looked like losers, like me, who had never been able to make enough money to travel in style. Women all wore jeans, high heels and expression less faces like robots that hadn´t learned to smile. I had just time enough for a coffee before I joined the next bus going to Alicante, south of Spain, through a plain, an endless landscape, and lifeless I didn´t see a single bull or a grazing cow, nor a sheep. Between Alicante and the blue Mediterranean I was met with the unseemly sight of thousand upon thousand of houses purpose built for tourism alone. The town named La Playa had no centre, like peeling an onion, and the official language seemed to be English. Of course there were pubs where elderly singers sang tunes popular in the 1970th In all fairness it must be said that the sun was shining and people son the beach taking in the sun, as we live in a society where a suntan is a sign of prosperity. Five days later I took the same torturous journey back to Portugal; to a town that as a centre and a history that is modest and lacks high drama.