This post looks at the widespread use of hashish or hash, a purer and more potent variation of marijuana, in Madrid, Spain. Hash is classed as a ´soft drug´ worldwide and this I believe leads to its abuse. Have a look!

¨Hash!¨ hisses the man. This is Retiro park and it´s a lazy Sunday afternoon. I am nailed to the spot, wondering if I have heard right. ¨Hash!¨, this time more urgently. Yes, this man is trying to sell me soft drugs in the middle of what is arguably Madrid´s most famous park. Talk about a downer, I came to the park to get away from it all, not to take part in shady drug dealings.

Hash or ´chocolate´as it is known in Madrid, is in my experience, as ubiquitous as the botellón and as popular as fútbol. Let´s cast a retrospective eye over my encounters with this substance in the past year and a half. More than half the house parties that I have been to, of the lines outside concerts, bars and discos that I have stood in, have had the distinct smell of hash wafting over affairs. On countless occasions I have smelt hash in the streets, sometimes so strongly that I feel that I am back in Amsterdam! One of my flatmates has seen, on several occasions, people on their way to work having a sneaky joint, before they begin what is likely to be a surrealistic day of work. One of the metro newspapers reported a few years back that Spanish teenagers consider smoking hash less harmful than cigarettes. The Spanish authorities are trying to change imagine of hash as a ´soft drug´. Police in Barcelona last year began imposing 200 euro fines on people smoking hash and marijuana in the streets.

So this is my gripe. After countless visits to Retiro park I must have been propositioned by most of the hash dealers in Madrid. That´s quite honestly, why I now prefer to go to Casa de Campo!

I celebrated my 25th birthday in London on Sunday. For me turning 25 is something of a milestone, I am moving ever further away from my teenage years and closer to my thirties, yet I still fit the 18-to-30 year old ‘party’ crowd mold quite well. I am now solidly in my mid-twenties and it is really a wake up call. Things that I used to put off for ‘one day’ or ‘when I am older’ are suddenly pressing priorities, things like finally getting into shape through regular gym sessions and writing my novel, something that I have tinkered and toyed with for almost three years.  Also the question of how much longer I want to stay in Madrid is foremost on my mind. After a week in London, I realise how much I want to be among people who share my cultural values and speak English. My father is English, from the Bournemouth, and I even when I was at school I harboured the dream of spending a year or two in old Blighty. Spain is great, the weather, the amount of cash I rake in, the chance to travel so much. This year has been exceptional, especially from that regard. I have been to Dublin, to the INF youth rally in Italy, to Ibiza, to London and I am going to a wedding in Germany in September. I still feel a calling to go to Portugal and Morocco. And of course Cap D’Agde. I feel it’s time to really get going.

I got an internship at European Vibe magazine. I went in a couple of times,then stopped going (for what reason I don’t really know!). The internship is a sitting duck of an opportunity.

This is my first published travel piece of 2009, it appeared in edition 72, February 20th 2009 of the Makana Moon in Grahamstown! Enjoy!  “Spain is only fourteen kilometres from Africa”, a Spaniard once told me, referring to the narrow stretch of Mediterranean Sea between southern Spain and Morocco. This tiny gap is called the Straits of Gibraltar and is swum every year by a few people, which shows just how small the distance separating Africa from Europe really is. And, after a year living in Madrid, I realized that the proximity to Africa is not just physical, that there are many cultural and social similarities as well.

Spaniards seem to be conscious of parallels with Africa on some level and they are proud of the fact that they are quite literally, kissed by Africa. If you go back a few generations you will see that a considerable number of Spanish people have Arabic ancestry, after all, Spain was ruled by the Muslims for over seven centuries. This means they are not completely European – not encajonados, rigid and formal like the Germans, nor reserved and boring like the English. Plus, it helps to explain the nightmare of Iberian bureaucracy, which is particularly renowned in Europe. As South Africans, it’s likely that we have dealt with the Home Affairs or Traffic Departments and their Spanish counterparts (with similar glazed – over eyes and the movements of aged sloths) are just as bad. They are the nightmare of every foreigner who has to get an identification number.  I spent weeks running backwards and forwards, to get my identification number, social security number, municipal registration and health card. This entailed hours in queues, miming to people who could not understand me, although I speak near-fluent Spanish.

However the amazing weather made up for the many hours spent dealing with vacant civil servants. It’s quite strange because often Spain, especially the southern parts, feels like a province of North Africa. There are many obvious parallels between them. Imagine North Africa and you think infernal heat, the Sahara desert, year round sunshine and dark, swarthy Arabic speaking people. Well, the south of Spain is similar: 45 degree Celsius summers, the only desert in Europe, more sunshine than anywhere else on the Continent, road signs in Spanish and Arabic, and hundreds of mosques, a legacy of Muslim rule. Then of course you have the Arab tint in the hair, olive skin and dark eyes of people from the cities of Córdoba, Cadiz and Seville.

Spain is a hot country so its no real surprise that people like to take things easy. A prime example of this is the siesta, which hints at the South African pastime of an afternoon snooze on the grass in the shade. But the Spanish have taken what is for us ‘informal’ nap-time, institutionalized it and raised it to an art.  From two until five every afternoon, two-thirds of shops and businesses close and Madrid, a bustling metropolis, becomes like a ghost town.

Despite the siesta there are more people than ever before wandering the streets at all times now, due to unemployment – Spain has the second highest rate in Western Europe at 11 percent. Generally we don’t think of unemployment as a First-World problem, as its something that we are more than familiar with in Africa. However, now, it is a growing concern throughout Spain.

In Mzanszi we have immigrants from all parts of Southern Africa and Spain is the favourite destination of their Northern African counterparts. Hundreds of them arrive daily on Spanish shores, many of them malnourished and dehydrated, some dead. Most come from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and the Gambia – one of the two former Spanish colonies in Africa – and eke out an existence selling fake sunglasses and pirated DVD’s.

After my year in Madrid, I wouldn’t even be surprised to see a crammed taxi whizzing past the traffic on the yellow line!

It´s Sunday, the last day of the INF Youth Rally 2008, and the weather is warm and sunny. Everyone has flocked to the lawns to suntan, naked obviously.  There are young naturists,15 to 32 years old, from England, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Mexico and me, the lone South African. There are slightly over 130 young people at this year’s rally, almost double the previous year.  We are at a naturist campsite called De Vrije Vogels, a half-hour drive from Amsterdam in Holland.

What is naturism? I may hear you ask. The International Naturist Federation defines it as :

We have all been waiting for the weather to improve since the rally began on Wednesday. After all, this is a naturist rally and we want to be naked! Only a hardy handful were naked for the football and volleyball on Thursday and Friday, and everyone had to be naked for the massage workshop, but that was inside. Today is the first real opportunity.The Dutch are really getting into the free-spirited vibe. They are soaking each other with water balloons, mock wrestling and laughing hysterically. In the distance there are naked shapes playing shuttle ball and taking turns on the zip line.

 So what do we do at a naturist youth rally? Well, the day begins differently to start with. We wake up at around 7:30 and make our way sleepily to the communal shower blocks, where there are no ´male´and ´female´demarcations. Yes, this means guys and girls shower together. The showers are one of the most social places at the rally and a great way to get to know other naturists while soaping up. Plus, when I step out of the shower and grab a towel there is no need to cover up. This takes a while to get used to!

For me, much of the five days is spent trying to get myself to accept that I am in fact naked, or, when the weather is bad, that I am in a context where nakedness is permitted. The Dutch youth have done a great job of organising this years rally. We are provided three meals a day in the ´Oranje Huis´, the ´Orange House´, which is the barn that has been converted into the dining hall, meeting place and disco. We are priviledged, Holland is a naturist mecca, one in eight Dutch people people regularly practice naturism and Holland has the most federated naturists in the world. In my interactions with the Dutch youth I really get the feeling that naturism is part of the fabric of their culture. Take Margo, a 25 year-old Dutch woman, for example : “for me its about freedom, when I go on holiday its always more relaxing to not wear clothes. I can get a better tan and its more comfortable and I feel closer to nature.”

There is nothing erotic about being naked amongst such a large group. Indeed the only time I have ‘wayward’ thoughts or feel anything nearing arousal is when on the last day when I am fully clothed and walking through the gates and waving goodbye to t

I have been living in Spain for 9 months. My experience has been challenging as a whole. Currently I am living in a shared flat with 9 other people. They are from Mexico, Denmark, Spain, Brazil and Panama. So it´s really multi-cultural and there is never a dull moment. Not to mention the parties, which are legendary! The other day we had forty-five people over. I will be posting a few articles soon, promise!

I was 14 years old when I went to India for 10 weeks. It is the greatest experience that I have ever had. Imagine that for one moment: a 14 year old adolescent who had only been to England before who then goes to the great sub-continent. I arrived in Delhi a boy and left Delhi a man. India was my rite of passage, my intiation into a relentless, travelling life. Others have their teams, their sports, their friends, and I had my India. God, how I was shaken up and thrashed about by the people, the religion, the infinity-in-a-country. It was a sustained, spiritual journey. It was overwhelming for me, the girls with dripping tar hair and olive eyes, the fading impressions of English colonialism and the layer upon layer of religion, legend and fable. Go to India, it is a great land, an epic place, where every boyhood fantasy comes alive, a place of spice and jungle, a place that will smash you head in like a drug. Most of the impressions and emotions I have of the place are too fleeting and eternal to be placed into words. I felt both young and older-than-time in a country that seeps with so much vibrance, poverty and soul. I am haunted by all that is India.

India made me realise that it was my destiny to be a writer, and, for this, I am eternally grateful to it.

Wow! My blog has now had over 1,000 hits since the time I sent it up at the end of 2006. Thanks to all who have visited, I hope you have enjoyed the posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

I have decided to write a series of snippets about small, random events that have happened to me on my travels. These will be short and full of colour, so it will feel like you are taking a short holiday!

Keep checking my blog for two new posts to be published soon. One about my experiences in Amsterdam and the other about the INF naturist youth rally at Vrije Vogels, Holland.  

Every third Sunday of the month I head to the Chamartin Metro station in Madrid, Spain. I go up the escalator, past the bus terminal and into a gym tucked away at the back. I go past the cafeteria into the change rooms. And, when I come out, I am as naked as the day I was born. For the whole day, this otherwise new age spa that offers massages, saunas and steamrooms – is for the sole use of naturists, naked people like me!

Lounging in the sauna or steam room is relaxing, and even more so without clothes, when every inch of your skin is in contact with the heat or the bubbling water.