The Marathon: Malaga

Sona, Jake, Maya, and myself nicknamed our Semana Santa (Spring Break) trip “The Marathon.” We were to have a whirlwind trip across Northern Europe: Berlin, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam in nine days, flying in and out of Berlin from Malaga. It was to be a feat of European travel, 4 flights (2 Ryanair, 1 EasyJet, and 1 Norwegian) and 3 train rides. We knew it would be a stressful but fun filled adventure, so we were excited to get started Thursday after our literature exam.

We had to fly in and out of Malaga, a city on the Mediterranean coast of Spain (Costa del Sol), because Córdoba, for all intents and purposes, does not have an airport. Ryanair, being the accommodating airline that it is, changed our flight out of Malaga to 6:30am on Friday morning. It made the most sense to stay a night in a hostel in Malaga the night before, so we could at least be a little more refreshed than taking a train that gets into Malaga at like 2am and bumming it in the airport for a couple of hours. Regardless, we had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a couple taxis and make it to the airport on time.

We had heard a lot about the city of Malaga from our history teacher, Antonio. He had told us that Malaga was an incredibly touristy city full of Alemans (Germans) vacationing at the beach. He set our standards pretty low for the city, so we were pleasantly surprised to find the city quite pretty, although a little touristy. We did also see a lot of blond-haired Germans there. When we were in the airport, all the signs were in Spanish/English/German, which is not the norm. Most countries have signs in their native language and English. It was a true testament to the large amount of Germans that come to the Costa del Sol every year.

We didn’t really see much of Malaga that day, just a stop at a frozen yogurt place for a snack. Our host families had made us bocadillos (sandwiches) and we sat on our hostel’s terrace to eat them. The terrace had a beautiful view of the nearby cathedral. All in all, Malaga was a nice little rest before we started to run the marathon.