It’s almost dark by the time my train pulls out of the Tangiers station and heads south into the interior of Morocco. Tangiers rises sharply as we approach its edge, house-lights in terraces along steep hills, and then we’re in the dark of the countryside. The train is well-worn but well-maintained, and as the slightly pricier alternative to bus and shared taxi transportation, is still the main mode of transport for the country’s upper classes. My fellow passengers are a handful of Moroccan men in suits, carrying briefcases and reading newspapers, on their way back from meetings on the coast. Here and there a few women sit in elegant, if conservative, gowns, and French couple struggles with oversized packs toward the back of the car.

I sit next to Salim, an engineering student from Casablanca, who’s well-educated and speaks four languages (Arabic, French, Spanish, and Berber) fluently, as well as English that’s about as good as my Spanish, so we switch in and out of the two languages. He is, as it turns out, an atheist, one of the first atheists of Islamic origin I’ve met, and he strongly supports the secularization of Morocco. He has some hopes for the current king, Mohammed VI, a man he says some Moroccans hope will be a new Ataturk. The future, Salim says, is a separation of church and state; to legislate otherwise is to sideline your nation in the scientific advancements of the twenty-first century.

He gets off at Rabat to catch his connection west to Casablanca, and I read for the last hour and a half. I arrive in Fes around 10:30, where I find a message from my friend Shreya, who’s already got a room in a hotel in the medina with her boyfriend. I write down the name of the place and go outside to hail a taxi.

I quickly find myself trying to compare the scenery sliding past with previous experiences in Islamic or Arabic countries, especially the ancient cities of Aleppo and Damascus in Syria. But while there are a lot of similarities, there are a lot of differences as well — lumping the Moroccan and Syrian worlds together as “Arabic” or “Islamic” is a bit like lumping the Spanish and German worlds together as “European” and “Christian.” The proportions are different, for one thing; everywhere I look as we drive I see the classic pinched arch of Moroccan design.

Men wear thick camel-wool djellabas, sleeved and hooded robes in dark earth tones, instead of the flowing white thobes of the Syrian desert. On the women, there’s scarcely a full burqa to be seen, though headscarfs and hijabs are common. Some women, dark-skinned and weathered, have dark tattoos on their face that, upon further research, turn out to indicate tribal identity, social status, and how many male heirs a Berber woman has produced. There’s more meat on display, less eggplant and chickpeas. In terms of the city itself, Fes has less French colonial influence than does Damascus, but also less history in general; no streets laid by Alexander the Great here, no pagan temples turned into Byzantine churches turned into mosques.

But these sorts of comparisons can only get you so far. I find the hotel, which is fortunately just inside the main gate to the medina, and end up next to Shreya and Adam’s room, on a large inner courtyard. We sit out on the roof terrace and have a glass of mint tea as the city winds down in the night outside, orange lights blinking out one by one.

The next day, it’s time to explore. The medina, or old town, of Fes is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is rumored to be the largest car-free urban area in the world. Streets are impossibly narrow and, until you get the hang of them, chaotically twisting; a turn or two and you’re hopelessly lost. But this being a Moroccan city which gets the vast majority of its income from tourism, there’s always an overager child or timid hash dealer to point you in the right direction, for a small fee.

The touts generally try to point you in the right direction, or, more likely, whatever direction leads to a shop where they can get a commission (a.k.a. “my father’s shop! Very cheap! Very nice!”), whether you’re lost or not. They get old quickly, and so you learn ways around. A polite no, thank you, in Arabic: laa, shuqran, or just ignoring them, work as well as anything. When you ask for directions, ask an old man behind a counter.

A Berber clothworks

In fact, in talking with some of the older men, a certain annoyance can be felt there too. The old men working have a level of independence; they make their own money, they provide a service, they help their community. Many of them see the young hash-dealers and street touts as an annoyance, overeager parasites who give Morocco a bad name and unfairly advantage those shops that decide to use them.

One afternoon we navigate through the medina to the tanneries, which are enormous and multicolored. The specific hues of the dying pools change from week to week; today they’re warm, yellows from saffron and reds from sumac. Fes has a long history of leather production; during the first few centuries of the second millenium, the city supplied the light adarga shields, which were made of antelope skin and carried by Moorish light cavalry during the conquest of Spain. It proved to be so effective at deflecting lances and arrows for a mounted soldier that the Christian Spaniards picked up it’s use, and the adarga remained in high demand until the invention of firearms.

Much of the rest of our time is spent browsing the narrow souqs for this and that. The impulse to spend money is difficult to resist, especially with prices so low, and each of us end up with a few extra items in our packs. I come away with a box of spices and a blue Berber scarf. Our nights are usually spent at our hotel, drinking mint tea; Adam’s a good musician, and shows me a few tricks on my new Granadan guitar.

Shreya and Adam leave for London the day before my own departure back up to Tangiers. I spend my last morning in Fez with a cup of coffee on the roof terrace of the train station, practicing my guitar and watching the light on the orange trees.

I leave Granada on a sunny afternoon, bound for Algeciras, on the southern tip of Spain. I change buses in Malaga, and end up sitting next to a pair of travelers, Hamish and Lilu, from Canada and Russia, respectively. Hamish is a proper hippy, with a beard, tied-up dreads, and the well-worn shoes of two years (and counting) on the road. He wears a shalwar khemiz, and has been to Morocco several times before; he’s quite a connoisseur, he says, of hashish, and the Moroccan variety is some of the best. Lilu is young and Russian; she met Hamish at a commune north along the coast, and thought Morocco sounded interesting, so came along.

We talk as the sun sets and the bus rolls south. In the early evening the Rock of Gibraltar rises through the hills, striking in the gold light, and I’m surprised at how impressive it is among its lower, softer surroundings. It looks as if a giant has split a hill in two with a wedge and hammer, and thrown one half into the sea.

The ferry offices in Algeciras are only a few blocks from the bus station, and Hamish, Lilu and I decide to join forces for the night. We manage to find tickets to Morocco for just over ten euro, and spend the next few hours waiting in a dockside cafe, crowded with Moroccans waiting for their ride home. The air is full of cigarette smoke and Arabic.

The crossing, when it comes, is quick and easy. Hamish lets us in on the fact that we can process our passports at the ferry’s desk, so when we dock, there’s no paperwork waiting between me and my new continent.

But it’s dark, of course, and as our shuttle takes us from the port at Tangier Med to the Tangier city center, only silhouettes of jagged mountains show above the horizon. Tangiers is a modern city, and the streets of the center are well lit, wide, and at right angles. It’s not until we pass through the gates into the medina that they gain the narrow, twisting, dimly lit nature of Arabic city-planning I remember from Syria.

Our hotel, when we find one, is a bit dilapidated, but a bit grand, too, in that dilapidated kind of way, and we manage to pay 50 Moroccan dirham each for a room; a little less than five euro a piece. Hamish has already found one of his favorite hash dealers from his last visit, a friendly local named Chino — “because of my eyes,” he says, pointing at the way they slant down at the corners.

Chino, it turns out, spent most of his adolescence in Spain, culminating with an arrest for unspecified reasons that put him in prison for three and a half years. “But it’s okay,” he says, “Spanish prison, like Moroccan hotel!” He further elaborates on his plan to buy a jet ski to cross the straits, sneak past the Spanish coast guard, and return to visit his family in Granada.

By the next morning, I have word that my friends Adam and Shreya have arrived in Fes on a week-long visit, so I don’t stay in Tangier for a second night, and don’t have much time for pictures. My impression is of a city in the throes of modernization, pushed forward by King and people, where the medieval quarters of the city, once so charming, are now a little lost, and a little out of place.

As for me, I head for the train station, and buy a ticket to Fez.

Initially, my plan after Madrid is to head down to Córdoba, the historic capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba, which ruled the Islamic state of Al-Andalus for just over a hundred years in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But despite being in the off seasons, accommodations there are expensive, and so I head further south, to the city of Granada.

Granada itself interests me from a historic standpoint, as it was the last Islamic holdout in Spain. The fall of the city in 1492 marked the end of the Moorish presence in the Iberian peninsula and the end of the Reconquista, and marked a change in the Spanish approach to the world. That date, in fact, so famous to Americans as the year of Christopher Columbus’ famous voyage, is no coincidence: Columbus was funded in large part by the wealth the Spanish government captured in Granada. The main street, Gran Via de Colón, is named after the explorer.

I arrive in the outskirts of the city, in the dilapidated but relaxed modern district, and it’s a sunny half-hour walk into the center. Behind the city rise the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, which mark the first snow I’ve seen since leaving the Rockies way back in June.

Once near my hostel, I turn up into the Albayzín, the old Arabic quarter, and immediately the right-angle grid of the modern town gives way to the narrow twisting alleys of classic Arabic urban layout. My hostel, Oasis, is set up in a beautiful old four-story building with a covered central courtyard and roof terrace, and I immediately feel at home. Granada is cheap and relaxed; a beer or glass of wine costs about a euro fifty, and comes with a surprisingly substantial tapas plate free of charge. Two or three of these can make a lunch, and if you’re still hungry, a falafal wrap or lamb sandwich runs you around three euro.

I stay in Granada for about a week, working and writing. My young adult novel, which I’ve been composing in a series of notebooks, has come to a standstill, and so I stop the forward composition and go into intensive restructuring and historical research on topics ranging from the first Crusade to the Mongol conquests of the 13th century to the French occupation of Syria in the early twentieth century. As the research and plotting picks up, so do the book plans; the middle third of my notebooks is full of notes and ideas, and my computer copy slowly starts to reform in a way more to my liking.

One morning, I take a truly excellent walking tour up through the Arabic quarter to the church that crowns the hill in the center. From here, you can see the caves lining the hills behind the district. Divided by a path into the Gypsy caves and “the hippy caves,” this area has been a haven for the disenfranchised since the Muslim days, and local legend has it that the rich tradition of the Spanish guitar began there.

Music in general is taken very seriously in Granada, and talented street musicians are everywhere. Several are staying at my hostel, and late-night music sessions on the roof are shut down more than once by apologetic staff pleading sleep for those in the rooms just below us. It all makes me wish for an instrument; I play piano, but pianos are hard to come by when traveling. So instead, I interview several of the musicians staying at my hostel about the nature of travel with a guitar. Finally, I make my choice; I don’t play, but I can learn, and I figure carrying it around with me will force me to practice.

So I take a tour of the city’s many guitarrerias, where old master craftsman build instruments by hand, and where a good guitar can go for prices approaching a thousand euros. I, of course, have nowhere near that amount to spend, and so finally find a place that sells cheap guitars as well. I sit down to try a Made in China model that sells for thirty-five euros. The strings are stiff, the sound is flat, but, I think, it will work to learn on.

Then the shopkeeper pulls a guitar from the rack and hands it to me. “This is my cheapest hand-made model,” he says, “it’s probably more than you want to spend.”

I pick it up, and even though I don’t play guitar as yet, I’m immediately in love. It’s both lighter and stronger than the machine-made model, the sound is rich, the strings pliable. I find myself unable to set it down. “How much?” I say.

Half an hour later, new guitar and case in hand, I walk back to my hostel with a lighter heart and a lighter wallet. It was worth it, I think; I can eat rice for a few weeks.

Before I leave, I visit the Alhambra, the massive Arabic fortress that crowns one of the hills above the city, full of fortifications and palaces that served as inspirations for famous artists from Washington Irving and Salman Rushdie to M.C. Escher to Claude Debussy.

Immediately apparent is the different value system held by the North African Muslim rulers compared with their European counterparts; in Islamic culture, based til that point in fairly arid parts of the world, water, not gold, was the primary way of publicly displaying wealth. So whereas in places like Versailles or the Vatican gold and filigree are the most visual elements of construction, Islamic palaces like the Alhambra display wealth in their gardens, fountains, and waterworks. Construction is done in intricately carved wood and stone, streams run through carved channels behind and beneath pathways, every terrace holds a garden, and fountains are everywhere.

By the time my stay in Granada is up, I’m sad to see it go, and promise myself that I’ll come back. Maybe I’ll live in the hippy caves, learning flamenco guitar; who knows. But for the moment, Morocco is calling.

We’re turned out at seven in the morning from the Cruz Roja auberge in Catalayud, but I’m well rested, having gone to sleep at ten the night before. There’s frost on the ground and an icy mist in the air that makes me happy again to not be camping in the hills nearby.

That said, my money isn’t due until the evening, thanks to an eight-hour time difference between my bank and I. Jesus and I walk around for a while, to stay warm as much as anything, before I finally give up and drop my pack next to a comfortable enough chair in the train station. Jesus stops in from time to time during the day to talk, and the rest of the time I spend reading. Around five Jesus leaves for good, to a different charity run by las monjas this time, in search of another bed and another meal. It’s not an easy life; if travelers think having to sort out hostel reservations and ticket times is stressful, they should try doing so with no money. There is, in fact, a whole sin casa network of underground information, something like the old hobo codes in the States during the Great Depression; show up in a new town, sufficiently ragged to be accepted as a fellow vagabond, and you’ll be treated to reams of information as to the restaurants that give away free food after closing, the churches that open their doors on cold nights, the monasteries and convents that provide beds for the poor, the state services and the rules that accompany them, and the best ways to circumvent those rules.

But at six or seven I leave that network when an email informs me I now have money. I book a ticket to Madrid on the night train and eat the last of my bread and cheese en route, while breaking into a new book: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, which is impossibly entertaining and unspeakably horrifying in equal measures. The first fourth of the book takes me all the way to Madrid.

Most of the hostels here have one simple purpose: to provide a place for people to fall asleep after a night, and possibly a morning, of hard drinking. Beds are utilitarian and crowded, as many as will fit, into small, plain rooms that nearly always have at least two or three people sleeping off a binge in one corner or another. Every hostel advertises pub crawls, sometimes in multiple flavors, and each boasts one version or another of a claim to being the best party hostel in the city.

But it’s a place to sleep, and I’ve long since gained the gift of sleeping through drunken roommates stumbling in at all hours of the morning. I even join one of the pub crawls, figuring it’s an experience I might as well have sooner or later. The “pubs” are loud bars, with a lot of flashing lights and electronic music, mostly full of other backpackers. What little conversation there is takes place outside, in clouds of cigarette smoke and shivering clumps of underdressed tourists. One of our fellow pub crawlers comes out of the bar swearing and goes off in a corner to sulk — a girl he was trying to sleep with has apparently started crying and gone home, and he views it as a personal slight. I stay with the crawl until the last stop, an artificial-smoke-filled club lanced with green lasers, and, tired, leave after a few minutes to walk home by myself.

On the walk back the difference between these two nights strikes me keenly. The people weren’t so very different — whatever proverbs may say, I’ve seen no evidence of poverty granting virtue. Maybe it was the means. In Catalayud, we had little — and my companions far less than I did — so things like hot soup and a comfortable bed became luxuries. In Madrid, the expectation for many young travelers is fun, drunkenness, and free sex, and when any of those things is denied, it’s cause for unhappiness. What does this mean, exactly? Jesus and my Romanian friends aren’t sages or saints, just normal people on hard times. It’s pretentious in the extreme to romanticize poverty from a perspective of wealth, but there is something to be learned from going without for a bit: there is happiness to be had in the very simple things, if we can just get past all the noise and flash of the luxuries we’re supposed to want.

I spend a few more days in Madrid, though I don’t book another pub crawl. Instead, I walk around, to cafes here and there, to some of the city’s famous art museums, where I have my first real personal encounter with the works of Picasso and Goya and Dalí. Picasso’s works are strange and fascinating, requiring you step back and bend your head and stand in confused attendance. Goya is realer than life, full of a liquid physical light and a playfully metaphorical dark; Dalí is entrancing, full of meaning I’m not quite able to grasp, full of detail that hints at realism but is warped by the special properties of space in Dalí’s universe. Every one of his later works is the clean-edged creation of a divine madman.

Madrid itself is, at first glance, a somewhat dirty and unassuming kind of city, with a brusque and utilitarian air that reminds me at times of Queens or certain parts of London. There’s a giant palace on one side, swarming with tourists and somewhat the worse for wear, and a cathedral that only looks the part from certain angles. But every now and then, I get a glimpse, through gateways and church doors, into cavernous and elegant interiors and garden-filled courtyards. I’m told by a local that there was a time here when taxes were determined based on what could be seen of a place from the outside, and so many buildings were set up to look poor from without while being luxurious within.

Overall, that’s the impression of Madrid I come away with. There’s a hard shell around the heart of the city, and it’s easy as a tourist to just bounce around outside it. But I have a feeling that, if you were to live here, and if you were to let it, the city would open itself up to you and show you what it’s really about.

It takes perhaps five minutes to walk the length of the little village of Morata de Jalon, where I leave the train, and beyond that it’s a long ribbon of road through rocky hills, crossing and re-crossing a shallow river, while the sun sets and the day slowly cools into evening. Cars pass only occasionally, and as it gets later, not at all. Pack lighter after abandoning some extraneous gear and finished books in Zaragoza, it feels good to walk.

The mist rolls in an hour or so before nightfall, and as it does I come upon an abandoned village perched on a hill, crowned with the high walls of a medieval church. I jump at the chance, and climb up the steep slope past half-fallen houses to the church. There’s no roof, and where worshipers once knelt there’s now only grass. But three walls still stand, keeping out the wind, and through the fourth I can see the whole valley spread out below me. Every so often, the high speed AVE train from Zaragoza to Madrid rockets by in the distance like a jet at ground level, shaking the air for a moment before silence descends again.

Above the church on a high outcrop of rock is an improbable watchtower that, when whole, must have given its occupants a view of all possible approaches for miles in any direction. I climb up to it before dark, but it’s getting cold now and I don’t stay long before heading back to my sheltered little church.

There’s dry wood everywhere, and I build a fire as darkness falls in full. I spear bread and cheese and chorizo on a stick to roast and enjoy a hot meal, then settle in to read Walden. In one sitting, six hours by my fire, I nearly finish it. It seems appropriate, somehow, to be reading it here. Around midnight I let my fire die and climb into my sleeping bag, draping my jacket over it for extra warmth. It’s a bit chilly, but I’ve slept through worse in the mountains of Montana, and I wake the next morning rested and ready for another day.

The mist burns off quickly as the sun comes up, and by late morning I’m down to my t-shirt. As I get closer to Madrid, kilometer by slow kilometer, my narrow empty road joins another, and by two in the afternoon, I’ve reached the carreterra, triple-laned and loud with traffic. I consider hitchhiking, but I have a few euros still and figure I might as well see Catalayud — just a dozen kilometers further on along the tracks — before I try that. I finish Walden on the platform, which helps to pass the three hour wait.

Just as I’m turning the last page, a Spanish man shows up, also on foot. His name is Jesus, he speaks no English whatsoever, and he is sin casa — homeless. With an hour and a half left to wait, we talk, in my best broken Spanish, my first real conversation in that language since arriving in Spain. He’s from the south, a town on the border of Portugal, has five sisters and a brother, and hates the cold, a sentiment I share just at the moment.

My plan is to take the train to Catalayud, one of the larger towns in the region, and walk out of it to the mountains to camp another night. I still have bread and cheese to eat, and am getting paid the next day, so I’m not worried, but Jesus tells me about the Ayunamiento and la Cruz Roja of Catalayud — the town council and Red Cross, respectively. In Catalayud, the Red Cross and affiliated organizations are run by las monjas, or nuns, and I can’t pass up the opportunity. So we register for the night with the police at the Ayunamiento, where I am greeted with surprised but friendly smiles and a single officer whose English is slightly worse than my Spanish. I understand enough to catch the common sentiment — “it’s very cold, and if you camp in the mountains, you will die.” Clearly, these people have never heard of Montana, where three or four degrees Celsius is an unseasonably warm night in the winter, but I’m happy enough to accept the help. They’re happy to give me a place to stay, on the condition that this be a one-time occurrence. They have room tonight, but don’t generally want to be taking care of American tourists when they have Spanish mouths to feed.

So Jesus and I walk to a nearby auberge, where the nuns, kindly older women who also don’t speak English, are waiting with hot food: soup and bread and, wonder of wonders, roast chicken! The only other residents tonight are a Romanian couple, residents of Spain for the last eight years, down on their luck on a cold night. I never catch their names, but I talk to the Romanian man for some time. As his Spanish is slow and carefully pronounced and simple in its vocabulary, he’s easier to understand: he had two children, a boy and a girl, back in Romania. He came to Spain with high hopes of providing for his family, but right now, there’s no work to be had, especially for an immigrant. Times are hard, and his children, he is ashamed to say, are living with relatives, with no money at all coming from their own father and mother.

And yet, there’s a quiet kind of happiness. Jokes are still told, the food is good, and the old man who runs the auberge seems to have had his own history of hard times, and has none of the pitying piety I’ve occasionally seen in homeless shelters elsewhere, and instead shows an understanding, a commiseration, that makes us feel more like guests than recipients of charity. There’s a hot shower, and the beds are soft, and I use some of my newfound vocabulary to express my gratitude: “Muchas gracias, señor. Esta es mejor de las montañas.” Thank you, sir. This is better than the mountains.

I go to sleep warmer and more comfortable than I’ve been in a good many of the beds I’ve paid for.

From San Sebastián I head across a wide green landscape marked here and there by rocky ridges raising above the surrounding forest that cast ever longer shadows as the sun sets. By the time I get to Zaragoza, it’s already dark, and I step off the train into an immensely cavernous station, with four stories of hotel room balconies above ground and three levels of train platforms beneath. When I step outside, I find I’m on the outskirts of a large and busy city, the political capital of Aragon. A six-lane highway is the only road adjacent to the station, and it’s a long half-hour walk through upper-class but characterless residential districts before I finally reach my hostel, near the city center. It’s cold, and there’s a low damp layer of cloud hovering just over the tops of the buildings, and as I check in and drop off my luggage, I’m having doubts as to whether coming here was a good idea.

Then I walk out into town, and as I near the centers, the spires of the Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Pilar, or Our Lady of the Pillar, soar up above the medieval town center, lit up by spotlights, massive and otherworldly, and my doubts are banished. Satisfied with my choice after all, I stop in at a heated cafe for a coffee before heading back to the hostel for some work and sleep.

I spend the next few days exploring. History here emerges in succession; Our Lady of the Pillar is by far Zaragoza’s most visible landmark, a fancifully baroque testament to the amount of time and money the Catholic Kingdom of Aragon and the united Spanish state that followed it were willing to spend on their monuments to the faith. Move a little away, and the narrow streets still bear marks of Islamic architecture from the few centuries of occupation by the Caliphate of Cordoba, under which the city got its first iteration of its current name: Saraqusta.

Beneath that, Rome: the city was founded by the emperor Augustus as  Caesaraugusta, in the last few decades BCE, and the remnants, in the form of old walls, pillars, and river-works, are still found throughout the city. The food here is meant to be excellent, but a few days into my visit, I’m running into a problem: my funds are running dangerously low.

As I have money due to arrive in my account in a few days, I make a calculated choice to spend some time on the road. I’ve packed a sleeping bag and shelter, and had very little use of them so far, so, I think, why not? The only thing that worries me is a frigid wet fog that’s settled into the city deeper and deeper since my arrival, and shows no sign of departing. I cross my fingers and wait.

On the morning of my departure, it’s as cold and wet and gray as ever, and my heart sinks. But at this point, I’ve already made my decision, and so I spend two of my remaining few Euros to take the local train out into the countryside. The city falls away behind, and then we’re plunging into the backcountry of Aragon. I find out later that Aragon used to be extremely rich in mineral resources, full of thriving communities built around the mines. Now most of these are depleted, and the train rattles on past ghost town after ghost town, windows black and boarded, roofs caved in, street signs unreadable. In the gray fog, through a train window, the whole scene has the feel of apocalypse.

My nervousness grows as I near the starting point of my walk. Aragon is beautiful, but the fog obscures almost everything, and makes being outside uncomfortably cold. I think of trying to stay on the train past my ticket, just get to Catalayud and from there try to use a credit card to make it to Madrid.

Then, just minutes before we reach my station, the train rises abruptly into a series of jagged granite mountains, and plunges into a tunnel. A few moments later, we burst out the other side into brilliant sunshine and a gorgeous view of narrow peaks crowned with the improbable ruins of medieval watchtowers, rising up from rolling brown hills. The train’s brakes creak as it pulls to a stop, and I step off with a smile on my face, my pack on my back, and my feet ready for walking.

The bus to San Sebastián takes a little over two hours. As we head east, we leave the coast temporarily and rise up through low craggy mountains, sparsely forested and gray with the underlying rock that’s so thinly veiled with soil. Then back down, through Bilbao, with it’s urban expansiveness and patterned tiled roofs. I consider just getting off here and staying a while, but culinary excellence is calling, and in the late afternoon the bus pulls in at the San Sebastián station.

I walk up the river toward the old town, where the streets narrow down and twin bays close in from east and west. I learn later that the old town was almost completely destroyed in 1489 by a massive fire, and stayed that way for a few decades while town planners deliberated as to how to rebuild it. Several cutting-edge plans were submitted, among them a symmetrical octagonal design that (some locals claim) would have revolutionized urban planning. Finally, unable to settle on an innovation, the old town was rebuilt with precisely the same layout it had held before the fire — only with stone this time instead of wood.

The result is charming enough. Where the streets are wide enough, sidewalk cafes spill out of lit shops with strange Basque names that have plenty of consonants and a preponderance of Xs. Legs of ham hang in rows from roof-beams, and the bartops overflow with dozens of bite-sized delicacies — the pintxos (pronounced “pinchos”) that are the Basque answer to the Andalusian tapas.

I check into my hostel, on the edge of the old town, and find out San Sebastián is famous for more than just it’s food; it’s also one of northern Spain’s top surf destinations, with twin beaches and big waves that roll in off the cold north Atlantic. The hostel is full of Australians, more tan than is decent for the last weeks in November.

Though it’s already growing dark by the time my bags are stowed, San Sebastián seems to be just coming to life. The pintxos bars start opening for business around 6pm, as Spaniards start heading out for the night. First, pintxos with small glasses of wine or beer, then a full meal at 9:30 or ten; a late night of conversation, and finally sleep. Two of the top fifty restaurants in the world are in this town, both priced in the range of hundreds of euros, and I make a vow to come back here with Kate, when time and money allows. For the moment, though, I decide to focus on the pintxos.

So each night, I go to one or two bars before returning to the hostel to cook a much more modest main course. Typically, two pintxos and a glass of wine cost around five euro, which, given the quality of the food, is extremely good. San Sebastián varies quite a lot in the range of pintxos it offers, from traditional Basque dishes (like the ever present bacalao, or salted cod) to the somewhat insane, like the “mussel cappucino” — mussels with a tomato sauce, steamed milk, and a crusting of roasted nuts — at A Fuego Negro. The high point for me comes at a bar called Borda Berri, where I get a succulent chunk of cow’s cheek, a creamy cheese risotto, and a slice of duck seared on one side and crusted with black pepper, laid in the unseared side in a plum brandy sauce, that results in a succession of three flavors: first the sweet of the plum brandy, then the warm spice of the pepper, and finally the rich game taste of the duck itself.

Thanksgiving rolls around a few days into my stay, and I’ve almost decided to forget about it and eat more pintxos when the other American at the hostel manages to corral everyone into a big meal. My first Thanksgiving outside of the States is rescued by garlic mashed potatoes, roasted chicken, and a night on the town with a handful of people from a handful of countries.

My Spanish gradually improves, meanwhile, aided by a visit to the local museum, where exhibits are labeled only in Spanish and Basque. I find myself jotting down words to look up that have to deal with deep-sea fishing and archaeology, and manage to glean some local Basque history. I learn, for instance, that the Basques were famously successful whalers, carrying on a bustling nineteenth-century trade in whale oil and ambergris, and were among the first immigrant fishermen to Nova Scotia. My interest is piqued, and I find a few books on the Kindle about Basque history to read later.

Before I leave the city, I go out with a few other people at the hostel to a sideria — a Spanish cider-house — a few miles outside the city. It’s a traditional establishment with wooden chairs and tables, lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and cider-barrels the sizes of cabins lining the walls. Between each course, diners pick up their glasses and move to the adjoining cider rooms, where taps on the barrels are opened and cider shoots out in a pressurized stream to be deftly caught (as a group of old local men demonstrated for us) in the glass six feet away.

After a week of irresistible foods, my bank account is starting to feel the strain, and I start looking for new work, vowing to keep my expenditures down. Surveying my options, I decide, somewhat arbitrarily, to go to Zaragoza, the capital of the Spanish province of Aragon. I spend my last sunny day on Spain’s north coast drinking coffee while I wait for the train.

The ferry from Portsmouth is, as it turns out, a “mini-cruise,” a way for upper-middle-class upper-middle-age English couples to get away from the din of England by getting into the din of a smallish ship full of English people. I, for my part, intend to spend my time working, and find a table with a nearby plugin to settle in. Shortly thereafter, the pub quiz starts, followed by a quavering duet by a couple whose love for each other is far more apparent than their musical ability, and I retreat to quieter areas to wait out the rest of the passage.

From Portsmouth, on the southern tip of the UK, to Santander, on the north coast of Spain, takes just under twenty-four hours. I spend a surprisingly restful night on the floor of the “reclining seat room,” a.k.a. the third class quarters, and wake the next morning to gloriously blue sky and a warm sun reflecting off the waves. Ahead, outlined against the horizon, is a mountainous green coastline. As we approach it, Santander condenses into view, a city of tall white buildings lining a long harbor, with a tall hill and a castle between it and the sea. We pass a rocky island with a lighthouse, and then we’re docking, and “bienvenidos” is the first Spanish word I hear in Spain.

Santander is small but pretty, and deliciously warm after the chill and wet that’s accompanied most of my stay in the UK for the last few months. I spend a bit of time walking around with my pack, looking for a hostel that had been rumored to exist there, before breaking down and walking into a tourist office for a list of residences. I end up with my own room in a small pension for less than what I’d been paying in Portsmouth, and, quite proud of myself, go out to explore.

The wide avenue beside the sea is my first path, which leads out to a tall new building, a mariners’ university, with a flock of sailboats in an adjacent marina that make me want to take one and go, lack of sailing knowledge be damned. Someday, I vow to myself, I’m going to get myself one of those, and do this trip again, by sea.

I double back, uphill into the center of town. Santander is build on a hilly shoreline that rises to rocky mountains in the distance behind the city, and from the sea it’s all uphill. There’s the university district, with its cafes and cheap bars, and then the economic center, with narrow streets and shops selling jewelry and expensive clothes, and a multitude of sidewalk cafes which I’m glad to enjoy after drinking most of my coffee indoors since August.

The next day is just as sunny and just as warm, and I spend it exploring, walking from one side of my tourist’s map to the other, past wide parks and bookshops. I stop in one of these and buy a Spanish version of Harry Potter; I haven’t studied the language since high school, and so far, it’s been more necessary than Turkish in most of Turkey. It comes back quickly, though, and by the time I leave the city I’m able to do little things like order food and ask directions.

The wind picks up as the day progresses, and carries an undercurrent of bitter chill, as if to say that no matter what this sunshine thinks its doing, winter is here, and the warmth won’t last long.

As if fulfilling prophesy, the next day is gray and cloudy and cold, and I pack my things and walk to the bus station. It’s time to head south; I’m meeting my brother for Christmas in Barcelona, but before then I have a month to explore Spain and, hopefully, Morocco.

First, there’s something I have to do. I’ve always been interested in Basque, as one of the few truly isolated languages in Europe, and I discover during my research that the Basque Country is also famous for its food. The heart of Basque cuisine is only a couple hours away to the east, in a picturesque seaside town called San Sebastián; I board my bus in the afternoon with high hopes.

I have a few hours in London before catching my train to Portsmouth, and meet up with Shreya for lunch at a restaurant that manages to try to be British, American, French and Spanish all at the same time, but makes a decent pizza and vegetarian pasta. Shreya’s sinking her teeth into her first semester at SOAS, as well as taking part in an all-female reproduction of Hamlet and preparing for a possible visit to Morocco in December. I thank the gods for my relatively free schedule and say my goodbyes, then catch my train south in the afternoon.

It’s already dark and a bit chilly when I arrive, around six in the evening. Portsmouth is bustling and, from what I can see on the half-hour walk from the train station to my hostel, fairly featureless. Fair enough; I’ve been meaning to get some work done, and Portsmouth represents a good opportunity to do just that.

I settle in. This time of year, there aren’t many tourists save for a trio of British girls here for the weekend who get uproariously drunk around four in the morning and are gone the next day. Most of the residents are long-termers, in the area looking for work or just passing time.

After a day or two, it’s time to consider my options. I’d been planting to take the ferry from here to Saint-Malo, but plans for next spring are making me want to save money at the moment. Spain is cheaper, and the ferry to Santander is only ten euros more for more than twice the distance. Fair enough, I think, and buy the ticket, for the following Wednesday.

This leaves me a week in a town that, at first glance, doesn’t strike me as terribly interesting. In addition, the first few days are rainy and cold, and save for the occasional coffee or groceries expedition, I spend most of it in the hostel basement, working. It’s good to get some work done; I wrap up two projects while in Portsmouth that have been dragging out far too long, and put the second-to-last finishing touches on a third.

But I can’t stay in the hostel forever. A few days into my week, the weather clears up and the sky turns blue and the sun is almost warm. I go out for a walk, determined to see what, if anything, this place has to offer. As it turns out, Portsmouth has its pretty moments. There’s a long park along the shore, where waves crash against the break-wall, fronted by a stately line of hotels and old four-story buildings. Out to sea are the stocky naval forts. One of these, Spitbank Fort, is a luxury residence, where a mere 14,000 pounds gets you a night with the whole place to yourself. There’s the historical dockyard, where a few tall ships are displayed for tourists to explore — at the heady sum of twenty pounds for the lot. I content myself taking pictures from the outside. The fortifications along the shoreline are nice, and the marinas with their expensive sailboats temporarily inspire envy.

I get an instant of real interest as I stumble into a historic region of Portsmouth called Spice Island and read a few of the helpful placards scattered around. Spice Island, as it turns out, was a den of thieves and gamblers and pirates a century and a half ago. The buildings were cramped, the pubs were cheap, and prostitutes crowded the corners. A dozen languages were shouted, coarsely, by sailors from all over the western world, and should you happen to have a drink or two too many of the local grog, there was a good chance you’d wake up the next morning a hundred miles out to sea with decks to be swabbed, courtesy of the Spice Island press gangs.

These days, there’s a park, and a few pubs left over from the good old days that have, in the meantime, acquired a veneer of respectability.

All told, the strongest feeling I have for Portsmouth before departure is a twinge of regret that I couldn’t have seen it as it once was, a bustling harbor city for an empire that spanned the world. I boarded my ferry to Spain early on a misty Wednesday morning without looking back.

A few hours after saying goodbye to Kate at the Victoria Coach Station in London, I catch the local bus to Oxford. A friend of mine from my 2009 trip to Turkey, Monica, has since managed to become a Rhodes scholar and is now studying modern Middle Eastern affairs. Last time I saw her, she was studying Turkish, and she already spoke Arabic; now she’s ensconced in an Anglophone part of the world for the first time in a few years.

London passes from the stately old buildings of the center to the faceless geometry of suburbia, and fades from there to the green of farmlands and tame woods. By the time we arrive in Oxford, it’s already dark. Monica meets me at the station, and we talk about what’s gone on for the past few years as she walks me back to her residence.

That residence turns out to be a sort of convent. The building is managed by nuns, who occupy the top floor, while students — all working on graduate degrees — occupy the bottom. The rooms are small and austere, but the common areas are generous. There’s a large library, several common rooms, a well-equipped kitchen, and even a sun room looking out on the garden. All in all, not a bad place to spend time in.

Monica’s just returned from a conference on the Arab Spring revolutions going on throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and, the revolutions being what they are, the Middle Eastern Studies group in Oxford is scrambling to keep up. There are lectures and talks every day or two, from Tunisian academics, exiled Syrian writers, and western experts on the region. I attend some of these with Monica, learning about the political breakdown of the new government in Tunisia, and the oppressions of the Assad regime in Syria. Monica has just spent a few months in Tunisia, interviewing Tunisians in the wake of the revolution, and has even published an op-ed piece on her experience in the New York Times.

The dining room at Rhodes House

I also visit Rhodes House, where I meet some of the other Rhodes scholars, and attend a talk by Nannerl Keohane on the shifting role of women in the modern world. Writing in pubs, working in cafes, I eavesdrop on conversations on economics, linguistics, history; mentions of football or popular television are conspicuously absent. It’s a rarefied atmosphere; perhaps too rarefied. Monica and I escape over the weekend to the Turkish district of London, where we find a good Turkish restaurant and the first truly great Turkish shisha since Istanbul. It’s the fifth of November, and bonfires are lit in the parks as fireworks explode overhead. Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder fire and plot … leave it to the British to celebrate the anniversary of a failed terrorist attempt.

Before I leave, I make a point of stopping in at the Eagle and Child, the old haunt of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, to sit and write. I’ve already written in J.K. Rowling’s old cafe in Edinburgh; now I just need to find out where Suzanne Collins did most of her work, and I’ll be set. Across the room, a pair of fairly drunk academics hold court. People in Oxford don’t speak like normal humans. There are no “yeahs” or “likes,” no hemming and hawing; just full sentences, complete with complex independent clauses, plenty of parenthetic commas, and loads of transitional phrases. One can almost hear the semicolons.

The weekend passes; sun is calling. Rather than make the same old journey back across the Channel at Dover, I’ve decided to keep west, and head instead towards Portsmouth, where ferries depart to multiple destination along the French and Spanish coasts. I’ve not yet decided where to go, but I’m ready to leave the United Kingdom, for someplace with more warmth and less English. Monica accompanies me to London, where she has an interview, and we part ways outside the bus station.

“See you later,” I say, “in some God-forsaken part of the world.”

“Count on it,” she says, and smiles, and then I’m on my way.