What a Week!

This was not an easy week for me in Spain. On Monday evening the email account that has supported me with no  problems for more than ten years was compromised; I spent most of Tuesday reassuring friends and associates that I had not become a Viagra salesperson in my spare time, and making sure that my system was clean (it was). Wednesday I used more than six hours trying to access my banking account in the U.S., only to discover that the credit card had been stopped and access to the online banking account had been halted because the renewal card which had been sent to my Spanish address had been returned as undeliverable--and the bank is in California, so I couldn't even talk to them before 4:00 P.M. my time. Thursday a home renovation team arrived to do a "little job"--knocking a small wall from the living room into an empty space, so they could move the hot water heater from the kitchen to the new space, thereby freeing up an area large enough to install a new, decent-sized refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen. I was home alone during this time, so not only did I have to answer their questions, I also had to talk to the door-to-door advanced funeral arrangements salesperson who stopped by mid-day to pressure me into dealing with this "subject that we don't want to talk about." I really didn't want to talk about it then. And then mid-afternoon, the electricity was cut off with no advanced warning, just as I was in the middle of initiating a new alternative email account. I guess I was lucky--I could have been in my secure banking area.

So Friday morning, after I attended a brand-new Spanish class and came home to see that the renovators still had their stuff spread all over the first floor of the house, it seemed like a really nice idea to meet good friends and neighbors on the first day of a Wheel of Tapas in the neighboring town of Benijofar. I've written about these tapas festivals before. Generally the idea is that most of a town's bars, cafes, and restaurants agree on a particular weekend to offer a special tapa and drink for two euros--each restaurant has its own specialty, and the municipality produces a glossy brochure with a map to the establishments and a menu of their offerings, and if you visit enough establishments you can vote on the best and be entered in the drawing to win a fabulous prize. Only once before have we ever been able to stomach enough tapas and wine to qualify to vote and enter, but we always enjoy sitting in the sun on a weekend afternoon with a drink, a tapa, and some friends, and then moving on to the next place--once or twice.

That's what we did Friday afternoon this week. And it wasn't even a disaster when we discovered that we were too early for the festival--showing up at 2:00 PM when it didn't start until 7:00 PM. We just went to a familiar restaurant and offered to be the beta tasters for that evening's tapa, and it worked. We had a nice time and by the time we got home, the renovators had gone for the weekend, leaving a semi-clean house until their scheduled return on Monday. This noontime when I picked up Johannes after his morning at his cave art exhibition, we stopped at a place listing a tapa of milanesa a la napolitana, an Argentine specialty and one of his favorites. That plus the sausages from the Dutch bar next door made a very nice lunch, and we enjoyed sitting out, the two of us, in sun and watching the other foreigners and the Spanish taking advantage of the Wheel of Tapas and delightfully warm and sunny autumn weather.