So today we are leaving Gran Canaria. In fact, while writing these lines, we are sitting in the plane already, on the way to Germany. Apra is fast asleep, lying on the seat next to me, her legs on my lap. We had a great time on this island and thanks to our friend Betty, we could get to know quite a few Canarian people, get to know more about the culture there and also understand that living on an island is quite different!
First of all, there is of course the fact that you are always close to the ocean. On Gran Canaria, this means from anywhere on the island, you can drive an hour and you will reach the seaside – either beautiful sand beaches with soft waves or rocky coasts with stairs into the water or a beach with black stone pebbles.
Particularly on Gran Canaria, the miniature continent however, you can also have nearly every other weather and landscapes: just drive up the mountains and you have views like in the Alps on one side or rocks reminding of the Rocky Mountains on the other. And you can see the reminder that you are on volcanic islands when you look at some lava-shaped mountain sides that look like molten ice-cream. I heard that two years ago, a volcano was even active on another island!
If you want to go any further though, if you want to go to any other country, if you want to have a longer drive and actually cross a border, you have to take a ship or a flight. There is no other way. It’s not like in Germany, where you can take your car and, depending on where you are, drive a few hours to reach France, Switzerland, Denmark or even Italy! You have to get onto a ship or into a plane. Apart from having to pay more for such journeys, you also need to calculate more time. And that’s why Gran Canarians, as we have learned last week, go for holidays on their own island!
Yes, it is true and we found this very funny. Actually, in Germany, it has become fashion, too: you make holidays in your own country. That can mean however to drive eight hours to the North Sea and get a hotel at the beach. Or the other way round, go skiing in the Alps! In India, you can anyway take a flight of three hours and still land in the same country.
On Gran Canaria, people don’t need to drive that far: they simply take their car, go for a ride of one hour or one-and-a-half and then rent an apartment where they reached! That can be in the capital, at the sunny beaches of the South, in a windy fisherman’s town in the North or high up in the mountains with a spectacular view on the mountains.
They are away from their home, so it is holidays. It doesn’t matter that in other countries – like India or Germany, the two countries where I consider myself being at home – you would probably go home in the evening, even if it was still a drive of two hours! It is all a matter of the mind. It all happens in your head. And thinking like this, you can actually even make a holiday in your own home, not even moving away from your own bed.
Just change your point of view – maybe even to ‘island-view’! 🙂
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