Had a good long look today at the Mediterranean, as it splendidly manifests itself in the harbour at Tangier. This was on account of the fact that, having missed the morning ferry to Spain, we weren't going anywhere for several hours. It turned out to be time well spent.
The Med is a definite blue for the most part - a real sea-blue - but on close inspection is blue-green in the harbour, a rich, stylish turquoise. Children, by the way, love turquoise, though no one ever chooses it as a favourite colour. (I base the previous sentence on my experience as a child, so shoot me if I'm over-generalising.)
On the highway to Seville from Tarifa the colours turned even richer in the protracted sunset. Staring out the window of our bus we were treated to a sort of Rothko in movement: below the horizon something like black, or navy blue; then a band of orange, turning yellow at its top; then a sudden light blue shading into a rich royal blue and then into navy. Beautiful and brooding all at once. A few stars above - though not as a many as we'd been treated to in Morocco setting out in the early morning.
By the way, morning prayers at a tiny surau next to a petrol station, after ablutions taken in conditions close to freezing, will stand out for me as one of the most memorable of prayers I've ever been a participant in. A nice cup of coffee after, provided free by the petrol station added to the richness of the moment. (In Islam prayers have something of the quality of an event on occasion.)
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Couldn't help but have the word "Erinnerung" (German for "memory") pop into my head - this reminded me of a two passages from De Botton that I came across quite some time back from "The Art of Travel" and "How Proust Can Change Your Life".
On another note, this expedition seems to be one of "Erinnerung" as well (which in German literally means "looking within oneself" - "er-inner-ung", unfortunately superficially defined as "memory" in far less nuanced English) - self-discovery and reflection of a sort. Lovely - looking forward to more impressions and anecdotes.
Hello Niall! Thanks for the rich comments. These German chappies seem to have a word for everything!
This is a bit close to stereotyping, but I reckon the Germanic peoples are the introverts of Europe and the Latins are the extraverts, in Jungian terms. Spanish art and decoration, in the South at least, is strikingly concerned with display, and a sense of carnival (when it's not lugubriously brooding on blood and death.)
Funnily enough I re-read de Botton's chapter On Curiosity from The Art of Travel before setting out as he's writing about Madrid which is where we're heading. He has excellent things to say on what it's worth the traveller being curious about in a world in which we seem to have documented everything.
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