Oath broken

There are things that cannot really be explained by reason and Gibraltar is one of them. A small rock (well, over 400 meters high) at the southern end of Spain and a huge customs station in front of it, like a reminder of pre-European (or pre-civilizational...) times, with long lines of cars and meticulous passport control. Because here you leave Europe and enter the realm of another ageing king, which has not been part of Europe for some time.

I was there once before, 8 years ago, with my young girlfriend at the time, Katt. Katt is Marrocan (so from the land in sight, half an hour by boat if no orca attacks you...). They wouldn't let us in back then - because Katt is Moroccan, and therefore not of the highly superior race of pure white Englishmen, the only ones who deserve to be treated like human beings.

The grim-faced (not to say primitively malicious) customs officer turned her away, not without spouting his most stupidly macho remarks, which outed him as what his stupid facial expression already clearly showed: a member of an underdeveloped primitive species full of (perfectly justified) inferiority complexes, which he tried to compensate for with heightened arrogance. (I'm not talking about the English, but this kind of customs officers...)

Well, I have sworn to myself that I will never set foot on this fucking rock in my life (although I am "lucky" enough to belong to the part of humanity that the customs officers regard as fully-fledged thanks to my Swiss passport).

But what do you do when the most seductive "woman" you can imagine is sitting next to you in the car, looking at you with her beautiful eyes and wanting to see Gibraltar "from the inside"?

Exactly: all the oaths in the world fade, and so we stood in the convoy for half an hour and let the check pass over us (I scowled, she happily...). And then we wound our way through the streets marked in English (to my further disappointment with right-hand traffic!) and also through the narrow alleyways of the small town.

A coffee in a café - surprisingly a normal, good coffee. But to pay in pounds - Euros are not accepted, although only 200 meters away from Europe... Well, what are credit cards for, so my bank now knows that I was in Gibraltar (and broke my oath because I succumbed so completely to Priscilla's charms) and sent me a text message saying "Welcome to Gibraltar".

Although Gibraltar is part of rather chilly, foggy England, the sun was shining (the Spanish sun! any bet!) and it even has a beach. Of course, this took a bit of preparation, as Priscilla wanted to find out for herself whether an English Mediterranean beach felt any different to a normal one.

I don't know if it felt different, I stayed at the beach café, ate a small portion of the most horrible tortilla of my life and noticed that not a single woman was topless on the beach, as is completely normal on Spanish beaches a few hundred meters next door. But this is the UK, not the world we know :-)

So, quick summary of my Gibraltar visit: it was unnecessary for me and (unless I am irresistibly seduced again and can't resist, although I will try...) I won't be going back.

We didn't have much time either, so unfortunately it wasn't possible for Priscilla to take the cable car up the rock (over 40 euros, but with enough time she could have afforded it) and meet the only wild monkeys in Europe that live on this rock and can't leave because they don't have a European passport. I got that from Wikipedia, but it's actually wrong because Gibraltar is not part of Europe.

Exactly: as I said, I had to drop "my" dear Priscilla off at Malaga airport last night, which is perhaps the real reason why I'm writing a bit grumpily here...

I miss her. Can you empathize with that?