Over the past year I think I have hinted here and there about why I chose to live in Logroño, La Rioja, Spain. Of all the cities on the Iberian Peninsula, why on earth did I pick the one that nobody has ever heard from? Just to be a pain in the ass? With the exception of Murcia, Asturias, and Extremadura, I have been to every region in Spain, and I have been lucky enough to call Salamanca, Madrid, Córdoba, and Málaga home at one time or another. Why wasn’t I happy to stay in one of those places? Why did I need to move to the middle of nowhere? What more could I want?
La Rioja has held a fairytale-like appeal to me since I first moved to Spain in 2007. We had a 4 day weekend around Halloween, and I decided to take a last minute trip out to Zaragoza. I caught a ungodly early train, and being the brilliant college student I was, I decided it would just be easier to stay out all night partying and head straight to the station from the discotecas. Oh to be 19 again. And being Halloween weekend, it added the extra embarrassment of showing up at the train station with no coat, my face still covered in glitter and wearing fairy wings. Did I mention no one in Spain celebrates Halloween except for the Americans? Fabulous. At least I remembered my backpack.
I promptly passed out across two seats like a crazy person with my backpack as a pillow; lord knows what I must have smelled like. I dozed for a few hours, waking up with leg cramps and with my face pressed against the window, probably drooling with the painfully early morning sun shining in my eyes. And I can’t believe I didn’t have a Spanish boyfriend at this point. Shocking! As I rubbed the make-up and sleep from my eyes, I looked out the window onto one of the most stunning landscapes I have ever seen! Did I fall asleep and wake up in Neverland?
With my nose shoved up against the glass, I began to take it all in. Beautiful green trees followed by tiny hilltop towns set against a backdrop of stone gray mountains, surrounded by vineyard after vineyard, fields and fields of grape vines all awash in oranges, yellows, golds and reds signaling that fall has finally arrived in northern Spain. Where was I? I could see castles in the distance, encircled by fields of flowers, and the burnt terracotta red roofs of medieval villages. I had just enough sense in me to quickly grab my notebook and jot down the names of the next two stops: Haro and Logroño and snap some pics that don’t do it justice. One day I would come back here.
I’m a squirrel; I keep everything, including that notebook and my memory of that morning. Since that day I have had La Rioja in the back of my mind, probably building it up with unrealistic expectations of being an undiscovered magical land filled with enchanted forests and castles, and princes, and adventures. Who says you ever have to grow up? After that I moved to different cities around central and southern Spain, but I wasn’t happy. None of them gave me that feeling I experienced that Friday morning on the way to Zaragoza. How do I even begin to describe it? It wasn’t even dissatisfaction for where I was living; I loved Córdoba and the south, rather if was a wistful feeling of possibility; I had had a taste of something different and arresting, and I wanted more. Since that day on the train, I was drawn to the north; I wished to experience a utterly different Spain that what I was used to. I kept saying to myself, soon I will go back, and see La Rioja again. At the risk of exposing myself as a complete and total dork, it reminds of a quote from C.S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia, when a little orphan boy Sasha says, “I’ve been longing to go to the North all my life.” (10 points if you know what book it’s from).
So I don’t know what the point of this long ramble was. Maybe I just need to share. Maybe to justify in print why I chose to live here. Maybe just to tell you to follow your heart and take a chance, dreams do come true blah blah blah. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, I took a chance on a place that I only saw from the window of a train with a fuzzy brain from lack of sleep and too many calimochos from eyes full of glitter. And you know what? I don’t regret a thing and I couldn’t be happier here.
Have you ever acted on a whim like this? Chosen a place from a feeling? Has a small memory every encouraged you to make a big decision? How did it work out for you?
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[…] like to change colors. Last year I moved to Logroño, in La Rioja in the north of Spain after falling in love with the landscape on a train tide during the fall of 2007. Though Spain doesn’t have the lush forests and bright […]
A great story – There is a magical Charm which lasts almost an instant when you suddenly see a enchanted place – I lived in Bhutan ( Independant Country ) and there is a Village Town called Bhumthang which is like Switerland and many swiss have married locals and settled there – when I drove down from a High pass and into the valley Bhumthang slowly crept out – And I was enthralled – Since I am learning Spanish – I made a friend in Haro – She is a knowedlge power house and her lullaby of stories and history of Haro and La Rioja makes it a magical place and I am going to visit Haro – your story has reinforced my resolve to visit the place and stay for a month.
[…] in the north of Spain, La Rioja is a little region that packs a big punch. I decided to move here on a whim the fall of 2011, after I fell in love with the countryside on a train trip through the north four […]
Liz! So I studied abroad in Spain last spring (Extremadura, which NO ONE seems to want to talk about even though it’s amazing). While I was there, i met a lot of Americans who were either part of the BEDA program or the auxiliares program. After reading your blog, I decided to try to do the auxiliares…and last Friday I got my placement email to La Rioja, which I put as my third choice because of your website. Just wanted to say thank you for all of the information that you post and I love coming back to your blog time and time again to see what you’re doing and where you’re doing it. You’re the best!