Thursday, August 27, 2009

Pozzoblanco.




Still sick but thinking that it's just a small flu, I went to a second tournament in Spain.The fact sheet said it was in Seville but the truth was it is an hour and a half by train from Seville and then another hour and a half more by car. Thank God I wasn't traveling by myself! Sharon Fichman and her coach were with me.
When we got to the train station I don't even remember the name of, we were supposed to be picked up by an official transport. But! We waited for three hours and nobody came. And when we called the tournament transport, we were told that we are lucky to wait only for three hours! What???? Apparently some other players waited all day to be picked up! Nice! We decided not to wait all day especially at 10 pm! So we took a taxi.

At midnight, after getting lost two times, we finally got to our destination. I must say it was an interesting place. In a whole week I was there, I only saw 3 people on the streets and a total of 10 including hotel stuff.

The taxi parked at the beginning of a long narrow street that was closed for fiesta or something, we got our bags out of the car and dragged them along the antic stone surface of the street.I was laughing, I wished my camera was close by.
At the end of the street we found a small opening that revealed a plaza with a small church and our hotel. I don't know how old the hotel's building was, no one could say for sure and if it wasn't for a modern interior of the hotel it felt like we went back in time.

The next morning after a late 11 am breakfast we went to the tennis club. Apart of 100+ degrees weather outside we got to see a lot of dead grass and many cows on our way to the club. And again-no people!
We also discovered that it was high altitude and courts were as fast as ice. I think my body was a bit confused, I was coughing like crazy, sweating like crazy, couldn't breath and needed
to run and hit the ball that was flying like a bullet as soon as I touched it. Lets just say the first practice was not good!


Our second day in Pozzoblanco started with weird sounds coming from outside. It sounded like a crying animal with a police car siren. We looked outside our window and came face to face with a donkey! For a few seconds we were speechless and then we broke out in laughs! Someone parked a donkey outside our window! How many times can you see something like this?!

While we were taking pictures of a poor donkey, his owners came back, a man with a small boy. The boy got on top of the donkey giving us a happy smile, his father took the leash and they walked away leaving us a small "gift" to remember that donkey was there.


That was the most interesting moment of our stay in Pozzoblanco, a town in the middle of nowhere. The other adventures include: looking for food during the day and founding it at a "Senior Men's Club." Where everyone was so friendly to our "backs" when me and Sharon turned to the bar to order food. They even put their glasses on so they could see better.

Then there was a moment of scare that we will never get out of Pozzoblanco, when our flight reservations were canceled and then re-confirmed again all in Spanish without us knowing. And then of course there were tennis matches that started at 5 pm. And feature matches not before 10.00pm. How does it feel to play second after 10.00 pm? Just ask Sharon, she played two of those! I got lucky enough to play right at 5 pm! In the smack of the heat!

1 comment:

  1. LOL Your description of a Spanish countryside village looks so accurate to me! There are two Spains, one on the coast for tourists and the real one you experienced, hahaha

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