The logistics of going away at this time are for me - even if like last year it involves a round trip of over a thousand miles by car and multiple accommodation bookings - relatively straightforward. Even with three years experience it is plucking up courage to ask for the time which accounts for 95% of my delay.
With school events more or less over and now at least a plan in place to get us to 25th I decided that for booking a trip it was well into the red section of now or never. I did not even consider marathons, hearing that they nearly always require registration and are more for a younger set happy to sleep on a floor.
After writing off Tenerife and still desperate for sun, I looked at the Sol de Invierno tango meeting near Málaga. Twenty degrees in December, sun, sea, and an opportunity to practise my Spanish. I sent off an enquiry and in an afterthought asked how many people were going.
No sooner had I done so I found myself thinking, inexplicably about Tango Train 3 in Amsterdam. It is a series of afternoon and evening milongas run in Amsterdam from 24th December - 1 January even while other (non-participating) milongas run also in the city and nearby. The event is a collaboration among existing milonga organisers. There is no need to register or pre-book. You can just turn up.
Why consider this when sun is the main reason I wanted to go away? Yet within hours of sending off my enquiry to Spain I almost knew if I was going anywhere it would be Amsterdam. Nearly as cold as Scotland, knowing I would find myself negotiating a hired bike on possibly icy, certainly dark streets without a helmet, not knowing where I was going and to milongas where I knew it could be famously difficult to get dances - Amsterdam having a quite dreadful reputation as a “closed” dance scene.
That is perhaps why there is an alternative option at the same time - the Taboe camp in Austerlitz organised by Tango Atelier. It is a very different culture, offering 50 workshops over 6 days, a forest setting, “gatherings”, massage, yoga and dancing in a lake (presumably summer version only). You have to sign up for the six days of the camp and participate in the housekeeping. On the other hand it is child-friendly and serves vegetarian food. It is a totally different concept.
Whereas accommodation in the camp is provided, I know from experience that finding accommodation, never mind affordable accommodation in Amsterdam is fraught. Airbnb rooms after Christmas were well over £100/night. I would have to stay further out in somewhere like Utrecht (which I’d loved in September), but that was a pain. So why go to all this trouble instead of relaxing in the sun?: The answer: milonga culture.
Sol de Invierno brands itself as a Tango Meeting, not an encuentro (even in the Spanish version). Its website has a “Registration” section but it is more about prices and packages than “tell us who you are and if we think you're suitable we'll make enquiries”. It doesn’t give off the controlling “You will be vetted and there is a closing date” vibe of encuentro and marathon sites. It mentions, dates, times, has good accommodation & dance pass deals and optional excursions. It sounded relaxing and non-prescriptive. Perhaps that is because these organisers say they have between them twenty years experience of event organisation. Or perhaps it is just because they are more relaxed in Spain. There is not a whiff of do’s, don’ts and rules that dog many other European encuentro or marathon style events - I don't call them milongas because a milonga to me is something else.
At Gran Canaria’s first tango festival in 2014 I had liked the grave, inscrutable formality and the sudden, surprising smiles of the Spanish men of which I was all reminded a couple of years later in Buenos Aires, although Argentinian men I found decidedly more wolfish. I had liked the Spanish embraces, very different from the nordic version. Sol de Invierno anticipates 60% Spanish, 40% international visitors. But I knew I would be seeing the same mostly unvarying group of people at the same milongas for several days. I think this is not really a problem for a few days but in a small village I did not want to risk being a solo among couples which to some extent had been the case in the (much larger) Las Palmas. Occasionally I had felt uncharacteristically lonely over the five days I was there. I missed my children badly and wasn’t sure I wanted to risk that again.
The meeting in Nerja is something created in that place for that time. I can see why many people would like that - the sun, the relaxation, the dancing, especially if you are in a couple or with friends. Tango Train is also an artificial creation to an extent - the juxtaposition of so many milongas does not happen quite like this normally in Amsterdam, but its organisers do run milongas in Amsterdam which already has a thriving milonga scene. Within the anonymity of a city and with so much to explore a giraffe I felt could blend in with other giraffes. Another factor was that the Sol de Invierno milongas are in the village of Maro, near Nerja but they have now sold out of accommodation there so the nearest accommodation would be 2.5 km away, requiring 2-4 taxis/day at 10-15 euros each. That sounded like a bore. Still, in response to my enquiry I received a very courteous reply from the organisers who are expecting I think around 200 people. Could I but secure accommodation within walking distance and especially if I went accompanied I would look into it again for next year.
"Amsterdam..." said the insistent, internal voice and suddenly everything fell into place. Yesterday morning my husband who with yearly, deeper shakes of the head, calls me a teenager though I’ve known him close on twenty years said: cheerily “Yes, of course you can go”, though I am not altogether sure he knew whether I meant Nerja or the Netherlands. November in Scotland hadn't been fun: dark mornings well below zero and everyone ill and for ages. Mull of Kintyre in the supermarkets and Christmas songs on a loop which must drive their sainted employees up the wall. How much wiser to ask early, book early and have something to look forward to. I tell myself this each time I eventually do make a travel booking.
I found flights easily and instead of traipsing about looking for affordable spare rooms in people’s houses, a local dancer in the Tango Train - where to stay facebook group had a room for rent at a fraction of the Airbnb prices. But my patient husband offered me the hotel points he racks up but never uses.
Wonderfully, the Oranjerie salon in Arnhem on 2nd January is selling tickets online (for reasons of space). It is not hand-picking people though and while it wants a role balance, at least it is not a gender balance, which makes some of us who don't see life that way go whoosh! with indignation. So I am going to that too. You had to pick a role. I was confused and said 'Follower' though I seldom do dance that role and loathe both the term and the stricture since I never do know which role I’ll dance til I get to a milonga, usually deciding only upon who's there and even upon the track. I think I picked 'Follower' in the hope of better guy dancing than I usually see. But, things never being straightforward in the milongas, just because there probably will be better guy dancing in no way means I'll get any, certainly not if Amsterdam's apparently top flight but quite soul-destroying milonga La Bruja was anything to go by.
I have a feeling of dread in case Tango Train all goes wrong for me - and excitement, in case it’s wonderful. It's that feeling of both at the same time, like the feeling you get before journeys.
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