On my last day in Málaga, as I got into an elevator to a rooftop terrace for a night view of the city, my phone rang. I recognized the Memorial Sloan-Kettering number, so I picked up. I was worried I’d forgotten about an appointment or some rest results. It was a nurse from my oncologist’s office, calling to see how I was doing.
“I’m in Spain!” I said. “Can I call next week when I get home?” I asked, mindful of the 25-cents-a-minute charge. The nurse sounded happily surprised I was on vacation.
A year ago, I constantly felt sick. I was miserable, physically and personally. I know that my time of feeling good is limited, and that it’s purchased in months and maybe years. Sometimes I try to do too much and I feel like I don’t give people in my life enough attention or that I run myself a little ragged. I want to savor everything and maybe it’s too much.
I’m on a flight home now. I live moment to moment, and I feel like I’ve forgotten everything about my life at home, especially after spending so much time with people I knew at other points in my life. I managed to truly relax, from the beaches of Málaga to a lazy Sunday in Copenhagen. On the first night in Málaga, I fell into such a deep sleep that I woke up not knowing where I was—or almost who I was. I call those nights a night of rebooting. It’s not like when you open your laptop and the screen appears, when you see the black and white type as the computer remembers everything.
One of the reasons I love to travel is it gives me perspective. I feel comforted that I’m just a tiny insignificant part of the world. It’s also why I love living in New York, one of nine million. Traveling opens my eyes to the vast world and everything seems possible.
Spain is so beautiful.
And yet: One night I came back to the Málaga apartment by myself as my friend popped out to look for something at the grocery store. I couldn’t get in our door. I’m bad with keys and doors. I actually try to avoid opening doors whenever I can, because I always open them the wrong way or don’t turn the handles enough and end up feeling silly. I then realized that the bathroom window was to the right. Ours is to the left. I’d been trying to get into the wrong apartment. I sheepishly retreated to the other door and hoped no one was home in the other apartment. “Wherever you go, there you are,” a friend reminded me.
It’s this reason that travel sometimes makes me melancholy. I don’t often travel by myself. In Cuba, traveling with a group of unfamiliar people, I wondered if I would feel isolated. But the group was warm and welcoming and I soon felt enveloped in their dynamic. I can’t spend too much time in my own head or with only myself. I enjoy spending some time by myself, but I also sometimes feel a bit panicked at being myself in a new environment. Maybe it’s disappointment at always being me. I have to confront who I am out of my normal context. And yet, on these recent trips, I didn’t have those feelings. Maybe I’m finally more comfortable with myself after four decades of existence.
Me bundled up on the Irish beach, while people behind me played volleyball in swimsuits.
I had an amazing trip. I feel like the Málaga part was the vacation, bookended by seeing friends in Dublin and Copenhagen. I was in Dublin for a day, where I went to the beach near my friends’ house and took a jet lag nap before leaving for Málaga the next morning. On the flight, I thought about what we called a European Friend Tour that happened almost exactly eight years ago: Dublin, then Copenhagen, then Prague, then Berlin, all to see friends.
I have wishing powers: Every now and then I wish for something and it happens. Deodorant, a jacket, a hair dryer, an ice cream sundae, and a glass of wine are just some of things that have materialized for me after wishing for them. I consider them gifts from the universe. I was a little bummed I wouldn’t get to see my Prague friends on this trip. As my friend and I settled into our apartment in Málaga, I got a message from one of the Prague friends, asking for recommendations of things to do in Copenhagen. Our trips would overlap by a day, and I saw them after all on my Saturday night in Denmark.
Me in my new dress after sitting in a puddle.
Spain is one of my favorite places, and I thought I would never see it again. As it is, it’s been more than a decade since I returned. I’d never been to Málaga; my friend took care of renting the apartment. I always mean to write a travelogue of my vacations but I never get around to it, so here it goes.
Within five minutes of exploring the city, I managed to sit in a puddle. Wherever you go, there you are. So I bought a cute dress as water seeped through my pants. We shopped and found the “cute wine bar by the church” that she had been to on her last visit, despite the proliferation of both in the old town. We walked around through the Soho area and down by the Ferris wheel, then back to the old part of the city.
The next day, we went to the Van Gogh Alive interactive touring art experience. It was unseasonably chilly for most of my time in Spain, and the person at the desk asked if I was a student, I think because I had the hood of my hoodie up and looked particularly youthful. My friend laughed. Being mistaken for a student was worth the price of admission already. I was a little skeptical of an interactive exhibition, but I was surprised at the effect Vincent Van Gogh’s words, paired with his paintings, had on me. I’d been to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, but I felt like this gave me a deeper understanding of him, as a person and an artist. I found myself truly moved, maybe because I’m more of a words person. “We spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words,” he wrote.
He also wrote about comfort of arts: “In painting I want to say something comforting in the way that music is comforting.” And I took some of his words as comfort for cancer: “Only when I fall do I get up again.” And this also resonated, after this particularly tough few years: “But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen.”
After the Van Gogh exhibition, we went to the nearby Centre Pompidou Málaga. Somehow, ever since we were in high school, we decided we would one day become shepherdesses in Europe. We drew sheep on our notebooks. One year, she dressed as a shepherdess for Halloween, and me and another friend were her sheep. We spent hours poring over books at a bookshop, planning a future Europe trip. We kind of did it in 2011 in Dublin and in Berlin during the European Friend Tour, but we never really set out, just the two of us. As we entered the Pompidou, we saw a large flock of fluffy wooden sheep on wheels.
Finally, it was happening. It’s as if everything had been leading up to this point. Our dreams were realized.
So happy.
After taking in the museum exhibitions, we went to have an early dinner/late lunch. As I sat nestled next to a fire awaiting my paella, which I’ve decided is one of my all-time favorite foods, I handed my friend my phone. “Take a picture!” I said. “I’m so happy.”
Afterwards, we got frozen yogurt. I ordered all in Spanish and with three toppings and declared myself fluent and probably able to live in Málaga.
Then we attempted to climb the steep incline to the castle at the top of the city. I was too tired and had to rest very often.
With my new haircut!
Every now and then, cancer reminds me of its presence. I overheard my ex say, after we broke up, “I had fun walking around London by myself not thinking about cancer.” At the time, I was hooked up to IVs for four hours a day and had a PICC line in my arm, so I never had a break from cancer. But now I too can enjoy walking around Europe not thinking about cancer.
For the most part.
After a good night’s rest, I was ready to go to Cordoba the next day, but the train schedule was confusing and the tickets were more expensive than we anticipated, so we opted to see La Colección del Museo Ruso de San Petersburgo, Málaga, an outpost of the St. Petersburg art museum, housed in an old cigar factory. We got lunch on the walk, along the beach, and I watched fish and sardines cooked on skewers outside. I ate a whole fish.
By the time we got back to the old part of the city, the cathedral was closed but I’d spotted a barber that specialized in both men’s and women’s haircuts and I wanted to get my hair fixed. I usually go to a guy with a barber chair in a shoe repair shop near work, but we had some miscommunication this time, and my hair was weird. But maybe the key is not talking too much. After I explained that I didn’t speak too much Spanish, I tried to convey that I wanted the back cleaned up and I want it longer on top, eventually. She said she couldn’t make it longer. But she cleaned up the sides so that when it grows in, it will look like what I’m picturing. And it was 20 euros, a cut that would easily cost at least $50 in New York.
We took my new haircut to the castle steps, and finally reached the very top, which was closed. But we got some good photos of the city. At the Mexican restaurant for dinner, the tacos were 7 euros. Again used to NYC prices, I asked my friend uncertainly, “Per taco?” It turns out they were the tiny gourmet style soft corn tortilla tacos.
In my orange tree shorts reaching for an orange.
On my final day in Málaga, I had to visit the Museo Picasso Málaga, where my museum ID wasn’t accepted. (It’s usually the case in Europe but it had worked in a few museums so I was hopeful.) I particularly liked the room that showcased his love of animals and the Olga Picasso exhibition, which showed how her portrayal in Picasso’s paintings changed as their relationship dissolved.
So beautiful, it’s ridiculous.
It was finally sunny and warm, so we took the bus to nearby Nerja, along the Costa del Sol. Since I was trying to pack light, I didn’t bring my usual beach towel with my name embroidered on it, so I’m now the owner of a red and black España beach towel. From the Balcony of Europe, we took photos of the beautiful Mediterranean blue. It was ridiculously beautiful, ringed by mountains. The beach itself was a bit gravely, and the water itself was a little cold—I thought it was OK initially but I realized my legs had gone numb—but laying out in a bathing suit in the warm sun was perfect. “What should we do now?” my friend asked after about an hour. “Isn’t this it?” Even as the temperature cooled, it was hard to drag myself away from the beach to catch the bus back to Málaga.
Can’t talk to the oncologist’s office because I’m on a rooftop in Spain!
We tried to visit the cathedral again and it was closed, so we ended up at a restaurant called Clandestino, tucked away a tiny bit from the bustling Friday night Malaga streets before visiting the rooftop to take in one more view of Malaga at night.
So happy to spend time with some of my favorite expats!
In the morning, we tried to visit the cathedral again, but the hours on Google were wrong. Then I went to Copenhagen, where I watched a street party from my friend’s balcony before meeting up with the Prague friends for dinner at Baest. The following day was a lazy Sunday of walking around, getting pastry and finally getting a Danish hot dog, something I’ve thought about since my last one eight years ago. I tried to send postcards, but it would have been the equivalent of $5 each to send them so I’ll mail them from the post office near my office. I ate one more hot dog at the airport.
Hot dogs are in my top five favorite foods. I love Danish hot dogs.
That brings me to now, on a flight from Stockholm to New York. Home. Sometimes I can’t believe that New York is my home. Within the next month, I have friends in town and a trip to Nashville planned. I’ll be celebrating a year of independence. I love New York in the summer: the street fairs, the beach (not quite the Mediterranean or the pink shores of Bermuda, but I’ll take it), free outdoor activities.
Vacation is over, but I still have so many adventures ahead of me, I hope.