Granada´s Self Destruction
I don´t know if it´s just me, but I believe that Granada is self destructing. Last year I noticed a couple of construction sites starting. One was supposed to be a 6 month project to build a skate park and expand the athletic complex near my old flat. 7 months later they are still a ways from finishing. The larger project however, was to create a metro that should travel from the suburbs to Granada for easier commuting. I think this is scheduled to take up to 4 years, which doesn´t seem too bad on its own. But the problem is that the construction sites have effectively closed down a lot of the main roads in the city, and with it a lot of the businesses downtown have lost revenue or closed entirely. Now I had thought that with such a large project going on they would hire all the construction workers to work on the same project to speed it along, and focus on 1 part of the lines first before moving on to the other lines. For some reason I don´t understand they have done neither of these. They are trying to build the entire metro system simultaneously, which is a very noteworthy goal, except that I can see some parts of the line are nearly completed in the suburbs, but in the urban areas (where all the lines are going to lead) they haven´t finished digging up the streets. So I think it could be a few years before this part of downtown recovers economically (*NB The unemployment rate in Granada in February of 2009 was around 30%, I don’t know what it is today, but I don’t think it’s much lower than that). On top of that many of the small streets in down town are being torn up and repaved. I really like the way they are doing it, making the drains in the center of the street, and digging up the old pavement before laying more on, thus avoiding problems where the road becomes 6” (15cm) higher than the
Bathroom issues
This past week we’ve had several issues with the cuarto baño (bathroom). First the light went out, which meant a couple of days of darkness in the bathroom, since there isn´t a window there. That has been temporarily improved by putting a small red lamp in there. It´s enough to shower and stuff by, but anything in the mirror is difficult. Also, the hot water was not working for a couple of days, and now it´s the toilet that isn´t working so we have to ¨flush¨the toilet by dumping clean water into the toilet. Not terribly effective but keeps moderately clean water on top.
Visit from a VTer!
My friend Becky came to visit this weekend. She is from Essex, VT and is teaching in Madrid. We made pancakes for lunch for my roommates :) We went out a little bit, but had a fairly relaxing weekend
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