esta una vida buena

The people in Ribadavia and all over Galicia simply know how to enjoy life. 

From what I have seen by now there are no sad faces on the streets, no rudeness, no stress - especially in the small town, where you have time for everything and all the people know each other. It feels like in a big family, with all the lovely feelings and of course the drama J Many of the locals spend their free time in one of the four café-clubs, almost all of them on the same corner of the street, so that the distance when you change them won’t be exhausting. Aljama is my favorite by now – good music, live concerts sometimes and good terrace for long conversations with the young Ribadavians in “Spanglish” or whatever way of communication you can come up to. The situation with the language turned out to be a bit more difficult than I expected, because it is not that the people here haven’t studied English – they did, they know some things, but most of them just won’t say a word. Still, everyone is really friendly and communicative, random boys and girls just come and meet you, try to make you feel comfortable, a part of the place and its crazy society…

The other thing that gathers the people here are the parties, based mainly on food. How they love food! It surely takes an important part in life and meals are often shared with a good company. It will either be a private barbeque in the forests around or one of the typical fiestas in the region, connected with a traditional type of food – bread, peppers, different meat stuff… Twice a month in Ribadavia is the market day which turned out to be mostly connected with eating pulpo/octopus that is being prepared in many places on the street. The tradition brings everyone out this day to become part of the celebration of life over and over again. We also organize small cooking parties at home, so that the hosts are showing us their cuisine – sea food, toasts with goat cheese and caramelized onion and more and more; and me and Santa, both vegetarians (which simply equals to aliens here) are trying to seduce them with well-prepared vegetarian food J

After the food and the drinks the time has come for a midnight bath in the hot thermal springs, few in the region, where you can simply lay down in the healing waters and forget about everything but the stars upon…