Crying in Malaga
Looking back on my visit to Spain, I can safely say it was spectacular. It was brimming with everything you hope your travels will bring. And it was hot. So very very hot. I spent mornings at the beach and afternoons dodging the heat during “siesta,” sitting in my hostel making new friends and working. We all bore the heat together and spent the somewhat cooler evenings catching sunsets, grabbing tapas, going dancing and drinking the Spanish equivalent of an Aperol Spritz: tinto de verano. It was great…but listen, I still cried.
This marks the third post in my series on crying in foreign places, because travel is difficult and beautiful and emotional! And it’s okay to cry (really guys, it is). So what could possibly make me cry as I spent my hot summer days on beaches with clear blue waters and evenings making memories with new friends?
View from the top of Malaga’s beautiful cathedral. (photo: Lauren Mulvey)
Let’s set the scene, it’s another hot summer day in Malaga, a big coastal city with old-world Miami vibes. It’s a Tuesday, my last full day in the city after spending five sweaty days eating almost exclusively croquettes (fried balls typically filled with meat, cheese or seafood). Sounds sexy, I know. My plan for my last day was to jam a whole lot into 8-ish hours. I had a 10 a.m. appointment to visit the Picasso Museum in the city center and afterward I planned to take an hour-long bus to Nerja, a nearby beach town. The museum was a morning activity that I anticipated would take around an hour, at most two. Wrong.
I spent about 45 minutes in the Picasso Museum wondering how this guy had enough time to create all this art and also be a total player with multiple lovers and girlfriends. But despite all the time he probably spent admiring the beauty of women, his multiple iterations of works entitled “Head of Woman” were often very disconfigured faces. But don’t fight me, the guy’s a genius.
After cruising through a new exhibition of Picasso’s sculptures, I unassumingly approached a flight of stairs, and halfway down, I felt my foot slip out from under me. One very loud thud later, I felt extreme pain in my hand and was profusely telling a security guard I was fine. She sent me to the cafe below to get some ice where I cursed under my breath feeling almost sure that I broke a finger on my right hand.
With one finger in a very tiny cup of ice I rushed out the emergency exit of the museum gift shop and back to my hostel, with the chunky audio guide controller still hanging around my neck on a neon orange lanyard. I asked the receptionist at my hostel what to do and she advised me to purchase a travel insurance plan (because yes, I’m genuinely dim and still don’t have one). After some quick research, I found that it’s difficult to purchase a plan after you’ve already departed on your trip, so I decided to head straight to a hospital and hope for the best because at least it’s not America.
The receptionist pointed me to a private hospital in the city center. There I was told the prices for seeing a doctor, an x-ray and treatment. To no surprise, I walked out with the address of the nearest public hospital on a piece of paper. I grabbed a taxi to the hospital and stood in line amongst native-Spanish speakers trying to tell the emergency receptionist that I didn’t have travel insurance, but I had American insurance if that counts for anything (it doesn’t).
After asking everyone in the hospital “hablas ingles?” (do you speak English?) and consistently receiving “a little,” as an answer, I started just showing the nurses and doctors a screenshot of a Google Translate screen that explained the situation. I was ushered quickly from waiting room to consultation room to X-ray room to waiting room to consultation room where finally a beautiful Italian man told me my finger was not broken. I sighed in relief, but honestly I still felt unsure with the pain I was feeling.
On my way out of the hospital, I started to cry. Why am I perfectly healthy at home and suddenly get the flu and fall down a flight of stairs on my big dreamy solo trip abroad? Why did I waste my afternoon getting an X-ray of my finger when I could be at the beach? Why do I have to keep navigating foreign medical systems that I have no knowledge of? We may never know.
As an American, any given medical issue is an expensive problem to have. In Europe, many people find it strange when Americans freak out about going to the doctor. Why? Because a lot of them have free healthcare, but that’s a whole other blog post.
After I got back to the city center, it was well into the afternoon. I started to feel like I couldn’t get my day back on track, but I refused to give up. I used my four useful fingers and gently grabbed my swimsuit and towel, and spent an hour trying to find the right bus station so I could catch a ride to Nerja, a quaint beach town famous for its beautiful vistas and strikingly clear waters. An hour on the bus and I arrived. I was still feeling uneasy and stressed but I tried to lighten the mood. I sat on the beach with my useless finger, took a swim, and ended my afternoon with quite possibly the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever eaten. So hey, you can always turn the day around.
Nerja, Spain has some of the clearest waters along the coast of the Andalusian region. Photo taken post-cry. (photo: Lauren Mulvey)
After a few days, my finger started to heal a bit (but has never fully stopped hurting) and I could relax knowing that my dominant hand was fully able. What can we truly take away from this brief and feeble episode of hysteria in Spain? Are we learning that I’m a hypochondriac? That’s definitely possible. Are we learning that the stairs in the Malaga Picasso Museum are a little slick? Maybe. Are we learning about international healthcare systems? Absolutely.
