La Marcha

21 September, 13

Last night Susan and I went with friends to downtown Murcia for tapas. Julio and Toñi, Fede and Alicia, Susan and I were primed for a good time. Fede is Julio's cousin. Alicia works for Julio at Estanco de la Fuente, the tobacco shop. Helena is Fede's and Alicia's daughter, who is in Katherine's class at school. They live one block from us. Are you starting to see how tightly wound our little world can be? I can't talk bad about anybody in this town.

Murcia is the capital of the province of Murcia, sort of like New York, New York, except NY is not a capital. According to Wiki, Murcia has a population of 442,573 and is a university town with a nice cathedral. The downtown area is beautiful with grand plazas that interconnect and are filled with shops, restaurants, bars and about 5,000,000 yogurt shops. It is meant to be viewed with friends at a leisurely pace, while eating and/or drinking. And that begins La Marcha.

Growing up in Hartsville, SC we didn't have a lot to do as teenagers, so we cruised from the Sonic Drive-In to the Pizza Hut parking lot. If you were a total redneck, you went to the Rose's parking lot, too. We drank beer and got in fights. The police finally shut that down, mostly because we were cruising and parking behind the police station, and they were jealous. After that, we went out into the woods and built huge bonfires, where we would drink beer and get into fights. We called it "Uncle Ted's" to keep it a secret. Somehow that was a better alternative.

If you are a high school or college kid in Spain and looking for a good time, you go on La Marcha. The basic idea is to go from bar to bar drinking beer and eating tapas. Tapas are a beautiful Spanish invention. Each bar has its own speciality for bite-sized snacks. In the USA, you might get pretzels or peanuts. Here you could get octopus, Pulpos de Galicia, or snails, Caracoles. bocadillos with different types of jamon serrano and atun. If you went to another town, such as Granada, you would get totally different things. Every bar in every town has its own gastronomic expression. I realize right now that some of you are picky eaters and are ready to throw up at the mere mention of octopus and snails. Let me encourage you, however, to give everything at least one taste. Then you will know for sure how much you don't like it. I liked all of it, even the garlic mayonnaise, which is a minor miracle, since I am the other Southerner, my sister being the first, who does not like mayonnaise. John Crowley used to torture me by eating serving spoon-sized dollops of Duke's mayonnaise right out of the jar.
We had both of those last night. We also had potatoes with garlic aioli, some sort of big bean in a reddish sauce and little

We had a tamer, more elderly inspired La Marcha, hitting all of two bars and finally to one of those 5,000,000 yogurt shops. The point, though, is not to see how many places you can go, but to enjoy the people with whom you went. Evidently we accomplished that mission, because we got home at 2AM. Bienvenidos a España.