What remains ...

Let me take a moment to reflect on the little gems we picked up during our journey through Aragón and Castellón. I am currently sitting in the camper van parked in a small lot right by the beach of Guardamar. It’s completely packed. Streams of people are flowing past us towards the beach, laughing, joking, full of joy. It’s loud. And almost simultaneously, silence reaches for me, the calm that has wrapped us in a warm, soft cloak for many days of our journey. I don't want to lose it ...

When you embark on a journey into the unknown, you imagine what it will be like. Images appear in your mind. Hopes. Expectations. Surely also doubts, concerns, maybe even fears. I was no different. At some point during the trip, you begin to compare how closely your expectations align with reality. The problem is that I am an incorrigible optimist. I always dream of the best, the biggest, and the most beautiful. Of course, there are disappointments lurking. They probably still are, as I can't recall – I know that means nothing with my memory – that the experiences were more beautiful than I had imagined.

I think of the perfectly maintained roads, the landscapes. They were stunning, wonderful, fantastic. Like painted for campervan drivers. It went steeply up and down; there were tight curves, unsecured rock walls, and around every corner awaited a new panorama, a breathtaking view that inevitably drew my right foot toward the brake. These images were breathtaking. They will remain …

We visited 15 of the now 126 most beautiful villages in Spain. Each was different, each showed us why it deserved this designation. And yet there were enormous differences. Morella with its mighty castle towering over everything. Albarracín with its proud wall and distinctly Arabic legacy. Both places grand, excellently preserved, a bit shaped by tourism.

And Mirambel. My very own gem among the gems. A tiny, almost inconspicuous patch of earth, no mountains around, no spectacular river. And yet: The houses, painstakingly built from huge, roughly hewn boulders, the cobbled streets, the narrow alleys, the little mom-and-pop store where elderly people find the essentials for their daily lives, the abandoned school where only a handful of children were taught last, the little pub with the owner who laughed at me when I scraped the camper against a stone wall. There was transience, of course. But there was also future, hope, something permanent, something created for eternity. Between these ancient walls hung the words: “Time has no power over us.”

That was moving. Perhaps I feel it so acutely right now because the contrast is so vast, the difference to what I see when I look out of our camper and the longing inside me knocking to go back. Back to Mirambel. Even though the sun is smiling from the sky and we are looking directly at the sea from our camper.

The sea … In the past, that would have been enough for me. After this trip, that’s different. Something has shifted, changed. Deep within me. I will find out. Perhaps on our next trip. Perhaps again with you accompanying me.