Benidorm – Europes Dirty Secret

Unsere original Ziele war nach Guadix zu fahren. Ein total lustige Ort. The white stone houses sind in dem Erden gebaut. Sticking out from red-brown clay earth are little chimney stalks mit holes looking like the appearance of surrealistic outer space beings. A real Dali landscape, it’s quite eerie looking.

So the town’s accommodations weren’t up to par, and we decided noch weitere zu fahren. So… off to the Benidorm! Hell of the Costa Brava as Dagi hat mir erzählt. Letztes Mal habt Dagi und Hari auch mir erzählt daß diese Stadt that are on the east coast of Spain 🇪🇸 are just horrible; the pure terror of ein Hotel and eine Disco eine nach dem anderer.

Land of sun, booze and sex. I said, “Well, hey, that doesn’t sound too bad. What’s wrong with that?”

And Dagi, “Well…ja maybe you should see that.” So next thing you know, she’s fahren like eine Gesichtern Sau, unterwegs along the coast – and before long, we alight upon the forbidden city of Benidorm.

Oh my gosh. Was I shocked, as we drove by there were tens of signs for camping ⛺️ in Benidorm. The “city” itself consisted nur of all the same style- cloned, prefabricated, ugly, stale, inhumane skyscrapers. It looked really out of place, very man made (like a shopping mall on the moon.) So just drive to the campground which was kinda cheesy.

Then we douched (showered) and at 21:00 took a walk down an ever-darkening farm -type deserted road, seemingly in the middle of fields. Just I saw this looming, ominous, 20th century looking cardboard city, up ahead in the distance. I telling Dagi, “This isn’t a good thing, we don’t even know what’s up here.”

Einige Minuten später…war ich voll Tierische geschockt. I could not have vorgestellt this until ich daß echt gesehen habe. No way. This is the Europe that no American knows. (Even some guys we met there from Norway 🇳🇴 that go there for 12 years now, say they’ve never met an American 🇺🇸 in Benidorm.

Anyway, step aside Las Vegas. Disco mountain, carnival street, restaurants for German, Italian,English, Scandinavian, Irish ☘️… Then the kitsch hype.

Überall…”Do you speak English?”

“A little bit.”

“Where are you from?”

“San Diego.”

“Ohh America 🇺🇸.”

Ya, both of us and with the Niederländer guys, Dagi trying to pronounce Bröt. Him – “It is very difficult for foreigners.”

And, “Soccer, ⚽️ yes Fußball. I think you call it Soccer.”

Also, “I hate Germans.”

Just don’t mention Fußball.

People giving out cards to go to their disco, practically dragging us inside and double entries with two names. Trucks driving around to haul people- kids like cattle into their discos pumping out, “Please Don’t Go…” Wahnsinn.

We walked on beach, water, barefoot into Burger 🍔 King, washed our feet in sinks at 3 a.m. Jumping machine out in the sea games -real extreme. We danced in 20 different bars, or else 10 zweimal each.

Finally at 5:30 a.m. the bars closed, and the sun showed no sign of rising, so we left our Jaguar parked on beach and went to sleep 4 hours in the tent ⛺️. The cool Italian guy next to us and we, hung our Benidorm sticker laden shirts out to air.

 

Summer 1992