Le Tango around the World!

I have been here in Sitges since July 8th… and we are the 21st (just realized the national day of Belgium… happy 21st of July to all belgians reading this!! ….

So, Sitges. For those who don’t want it is a small beach city about 40 mins from Barcelona, I have been coming here 3 years in a row now, and had been here once earlier already. So, I know the place quite well, feel very comfortable walking around, know where I want to have my breakfast, where is the best shopping etc. Know the spot on the beach that I like (yeah… all those important things in life!)…. I was never too sure how it would be to go to the same vacation spot year after year… and frankly if it wasn’t for the tango festival here, I probably wouldn’t be coming back. but here I am yet again.

I am really lucky to have a friend who lives here and with whom I can stay…. Freddi, who is Djing often at the Tango marathon, has a great appartment here, about 5 min from the beach! How good is that!
I arrived on a sunday night, and after having spent about 2 weeks in the grey, cold and rain of Belgium (as you read in the previous posts), I was quite happy to be able to be laying on the beach in the sun and having nothing else to do! Not to make anybody jealous, but my schedule has been quite nice: waking up around 10:30, having breakfast with the other house guests, and then either go to the beach or to Barcelona, cooking dinner and then go out for drinks…. and then on wednesday the festival here in Sitges started.

the great thing about the tango festival in Sitges, is that you have people from all over the place coming here to take vacation and dance. where I am staying, Anke and Julio from Bremen were staying as well at the beginning. They are tango/salsa dancers who have been coming here for quite a while. We spent a lot of time together, hang out, went to Barcelona salsa dancing. Then, the group staying at the house changed, and it became very scandinavian; 2 guys and a woman from sweden, a woman from danemark, an Australian living in Berlin, Fredi, Marina his girlfriend from New York and myself! quite a great house. It seems quite a lot of people to fit in a small place, but somehow it works!
As the festival has started (and more of that in a later post), the schedule has changed, just a bit! Instead of waking up at 10.30, we are waking up later (yeah, when we come back home at 10.00am, it is quite difficult to wake up at 10.30 he eh eh ).

I have decided to take it easy this year. Sitges is very well known for the very high level of dancers coming: both leaders and follows.. and as usual, there are more good follows than leads, so most of the time, many ladies, even great dancers are sitting down a lot… especially when you don’t know many people. That was my experience for the previous Sitges and other festivals I went to. Of course I understand what was happening… we are having exactly the same thing in the states, but that time I was on the other side of the experience. It is good dancers who come to the festival to meet their friends, dance with them and having a good time. there is very little time to try to go around and meet new people. (which is quite an interesting concept as we are dancing about 8 hours a day for 5 days, and still there is not enough time!) So, I had been taking it with a good attitude, working on knowing people and making friends and not being frustrated if I was not dancing every single tandas of the night. the fact of having so many new people in the appartement will be a good thing of course, especially because the guys staying here are fabulous dancers….
more soon.

anso