I have a perverse fondness for almost all the foreign towns I’ve ever gotten sick in. A winter in Jerusalem with pneumonia sealed my love for this city. An afternoon in a colorful Santorini health clinic practically guaranteed I’d be back – five times. Shopping for migraine meds in a Caribbean supermarket left me far warmer and fuzzier than the duty free shops, and it wasn’t just the over-the-counter paracetemol with codeine.
There’s nothing like being a little down and out to take you off the tourist track and get you a unique perspective on wherever it is you seem to be having a breakdown.
Such was my fate on a recent trip to Spain.
I realized I was in for a rough ride on my first night in Lloret de Mar. My sore throat went from scratchy to hellfire in a matter of hours. By morning I could scarcely swallow. I’ve had strep and tonsillitis often enough times to know that I needed to get antibiotics on board ASAP if I was to get over it in time to be able to function at the conferences I was attending.
The receptionist at the front desk of my hotel offered to call a doctor for me. “But it will cost you 90 Euro,” she cautioned. She shook her head and apologized for the great expense. I didn’t tell her that back home, we pay close to this amount to wait for hours at an urgent care clinic.
Oh the luxury of a doctor on call! Feeling like royalty, I went back to my room to lie down.
The doctor arrived within 30 minutes and conducted a predictable exam of my throat and ears. He listened to my lungs. He asked about allergies and treated me much the same as any doctor would have, at home. This was both a relief and a let down, as I always enjoy a little random folk wisdom or non traditional remedy suggestion when seeking medical advice abroad. A little – not too much.
My doctor spoke sufficient English to explain that he believed I had a serious throat and sinus infection, and that he was recommending antibiotics which he was concerned I take immediately, along with something to bring down my fever.
“You can fill this at the local pharmacy” he advised me.
“Do I need to take a cab?”
“No… it’s so close!” he scoffed.”You can walk.”
This surprised me. This was different. I could not imagine my doctors at home suggesting I walk to a pharmacy when ill. At home I hit the drive thru on the way home from the clinic. My meds are delivered via vacuum tube, in a sealed plastic capsule, sent straight to my car. I don’t even unbuckle.
“just ask the front desk for directions to the pharmacy,” the doctor suggested. “It’s a five minute walk. ”
A five minute walk.
What I discovered in Lloret is that everything in this town, and possibly all coastal Spanish villages, is a five minute walk away. This has nothing to do with travel time or actual distance. It is a measure that roughly applies to any distance from a flat city block to 2 miles away and up theside of a mountain.
This five minute philosophy may also explain the relative fitness of everyone I encountered in Lloret de Mar. I saw grannies out at midnight, crossing busy intersections with their walkers on the way home from family dinners. At lunchtime I watched old men with prosthetic legs energetically hobbling off to the newsstand on the other end of town, canes at the ready. There was not a stitch of self pity or self-consciousness about them.
The few cabs in town sat unoccupied at taxi stands by the waterfront and the bus station. Who would need to call a cab when everything was so close? Certainly not me. Not after the doctor advised I walk.
Google Maps confirmed that the destination was indeed close (.6 miles from the hotel) and I headed out to get my meds filled. The pharmacy was locked tight when I got there. That was odd. It was 9:30 am. Perhaps it wasn’t due to open just yet?
“No worries,” I said. The fever was making me a little lightheaded, but I remembered seeing a pharmacy near the bus station. Another half mile and “five minutes” away. Onwards.
The second pharmacy was also shut tight, but had a note posted out front. What I could gather was this:
Five days a year are holidays during which local pharmacies are shut. I’d managed to get sick on one of them.
While the restaurants and retail shops all appeared to be open, all of the pharmacies in town were closed, save one, the “Emergencia Farmacia,” the location of which of which I could not decipher. It was either one block or a town away.
On the corner closest to the bus station there was a taxi cue, but nobody was going anywhere. The drivers were chatting, napping in the driver’s seats, playing cards, smoking. I attempted to hail a cab.
The drivers waved me to the head of the line where an elderly driver was animatedly debating something with a friend. The friend, also apparently in his seventies, was leaning into the car on the passenger side. I hated to interrupt. I imagined their discussion being important. Perhaps having to do with the region’s struggle for independence. Perhaps they were veterans.
For all I knew, they may have been arguing over the best place to get an egg sandwich.
“Necessito un farmacia abrir!” I used my best terrible high school Spanish, along with frantic gestures back at the closed pharmacy, to implore the cabbie to assist me in getting my antibiotic fix.
The cabbie’s friend heaved a tired but patient sigh and eased his torso out of the vehicle. He turned to saunter towards me in that slow confident way that only men of a certain age saunter. Deliberately slow, no need for him to rush for my emergency. He examined the sign outside the pharmacy and wrote down the address on a slip of paper.
“Farmacia es aqui” he said. “Abrir” His high school Spanish was better than mine, but it was clear Spanish was not his first language. Like most natives of Lloret, Catalan was his first language.
I entered the address of the emergency pharmacy into Google Maps on my phone and then showed it to him. The map made me dizzy, spinning like a top as the satellite tried to figure out which way I was facing.
“Donde? Which way?” I held out the phone.
The old man grimaced at my device, his dislike of Siri’s barked orders obvious.
“Taxi?” I asked again. It was getting hot out, and I was still feverish. I pointed back to his friend, who was still seated at the front of the line, leisurely smoking. The friend waved. My helper ignored this.
“No! No taxi!” he appeared offended now.
“We go… I take you. Five minutes!”
Then he held up five fingers, waved farewell to his taxi driver friend and set off in the direction of the hills at a surprisingly fast clip for his age.
I followed.
Ten minutes later, I was breathing heavily, struggling to keep pace. We passed an abandoned mini-mall and a schoolyard where children were arguing over a soccer ball. We walked past some sort of factory where a father was dropping off a uniformed son, calling after him to remember his lunch. We cut through a dusty alley with a stray cat and an emerged on a far more residential street where women with prams strolled without destination, gossiping as they bounced their babies to sleep.
Away from the t-shirt shops full of tourist goods. Just a regular day for regular folks.
My septuagenerian friend hadn’t even broke a sweat. He reminded me of my grade school gym teacher. Only nicer. I was dripping. I had a stitch in my side.Finally he stopped abruptly and pointed at a sign above a shop on the far corner.
“Farmacia” he smiled gruffly. He paused, as if deciding where to head next. We shook hands awkwardly.
I wondered if I should tip him, but before I could decide he was gone – headed back to town, back to his discussion about eggs or politics. I called out a thanks again and he was gone into the alley.
Ten minutes after that, my prescription was filled by a friendly pharmacist and I was headed on yet another “five minute walk” back to my hotel with a bag full of get-well supplies. I was hot, sweaty, slightly delirious with fever and inexplicably happy.
I could have been sick anywhere in the world, or even at home. I was lucky to be sick in Lloret, a city I will always associate with a kindly old stranger.
Getting sick on vacation or a work trip is less than ideal, but it also doesn’t always entirely suck.
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