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Months ago I chose leaving my home, the comfort zone I built with my parents that was silently killing my spirit. As Nietzsche did with the abyss, my life was at this point of no return looking at an empty routine, lacking of energy and a desire of danger. So I left, changing the rain and grey clouds over green fields of Galicia for a place I didn't know by the time, a pearl beside the Mediterranean sea undiscovered by the mass. That’s how I ended in Valencia, a city that lives under Barcelona’s shadow. The first thing that made me notice that I wasn’t at home anymore -like Dorothy in Oz- was the heat, the sun already beating at the beginning of October. My brother, who lived near, drove me to the apartment that become my personal trench. “There’s no returning”, I thought while unpacking the suitcase in the room I found perfect for me. Joan Didion and Miguel de Unamuno were at my night table, looking straight to Milan Kundera, Federico García Lorca and Zygmunt Bauman on my desk. All these books became my company, but no one made me connect with my new reality. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning but it felt like I had been awake for three days. Palms, orange colour and bricks was everything I saw from my window, accompanied by the noise from streets. I had never been in a place like this. But somehow, the feeling was good. By the time, I didn’t know nothing about Valencia despite Fallas -a typical party in March celebrated with tons of fire in many forms- and paella, the main rice dish in Spain and the one that made famous this region. I was willing to discover the city, the baroque palaces and monuments that tells the history behind a place in a midway between Italy, Morocco and Spain. However, the natural park named Albufera become my first choice. It was sunday before lunch, following spanish schedule, and that light deserved a celebration. After renting a bike and riding for 30 minutes, I arrived at a beach near El Palmar. My stomach was empty and the deep blue in the sky, without clouds, led me to the only restaurant in sight. It was the right time for a paella and discover more about what I had seen so far. There was no one but me, so I started chatting with the waiter. —It’s my first time in front of the Mediterranean sea without people, I barely knew the sand was so white and thin. While I was riding, I saw many houses in the middle of lagoons and boats all around— I said to the man trying to know where I was. —What you saw are all rice paddies, the classical ones. People have been living here for centuries, here is where farmers gave birth to paella. Nowadays this dish is all about chicken, rabbit or seafood, but during the Civil War or big hungers it was made with rat or doves. There are places that still cook with snails. The houses you have seen are called ‘barracas’, a typical architecture from the rice paddies with tall roofs, sometimes made with mud and the boats where the main communication with the city. Now tourist came here, take pictures and eat rice without knowing where they are stepping on really. All around here is nature but also history. In Valencia we had this famous writer Blasco Ibáñez who told our stories in all of his books, but specially in ‘La Barraca’ and ‘Cañas y Barro’. After eating a strong type of rice dish, not paella but something called arroç del senyoret -translated as ‘Lords’ rice’ because seafood is ready to eat-, I arrived at Albufera’s park. At this time of the year the sun shines hard but it lasts less than in summer, so I could admire the sunset from the lagoon pier. It was all orange around me and the sound of soft air through the rushes invade my lungs. What is this place? A strong silence answered me. This is what Serrat’s song ‘Mediterráneo’ was about. I am in peace, at last.