Given the fact that I had just returned from a trip home to the U.S., it doesn't make sense that I have now spent the past week in Denmark. But this trip was planned some time ago as just a quick visit to Danish-American friends of long standing. We left on Monday and returned on Friday very shortly before midnight, which was fortunate because, we were told, the new airport in Alicante closes at midnight and if your plane hasn't landed by that time, it will be diverted to Valencia and you get a free bus ride lasting a couple hours back to the outside, presumably, of the Alicante airport. Even though the Ryanair flight was late in leaving Billund, we made it in to Alicante under the wire, and I have never had checked baggage delivered as quickly as I did Friday night.
Denmark was lovely with Christmas decorations and leisurely shopping--not the rat race of Black Friday sales, as there are few sales in Denmark and no Thanksgiving to mark the beginning of the shopping frenzy. We did not have bad weather. This is the most positive statement that one can hope to make about weather when one travels to Denmark from Spain in the month of November. Gray days, but mostly dry, and cold enough for two layers on your legs and three up above when you are out and about. What Denmark lacks in sun at this time of year it makes up for with that lovely notion of central heat, and the luxury of underfloor heating in the bathroom. I am still wondering whether I will succumb to the temptation of having the tiles I love in our bathroom dug up to install heating fixtures below.
It didn't rain until Friday, and then it was indeed cold and dark and damp. Even though we had left Spain on Monday after an unusual rainy weekend--but we seldom complain because we always need the rain here--we looked forward to arriving back to warmer temperatures and sunnier skies. There are many good reasons for visiting Denmark, but one of them is that it will probably make you appreciate the weather in Spain more.
Warmer temperatures and sunnier skies did appear on Saturday morning when I finally woke up at almost 10:00. I've been unpacking, and doing laundry and grocery shopping ever since, and just generally getting back to normal after my two trips. Since I have had the privilege of enjoying Christmas decorations in the stores of two countries in the last month, I am inspired to get started with my Christmas preparations now. I'll be able to pull out the decorations from storage pretty soon--but first I need to pack away the cotton summer clothes that were perfectly appropriate when I left a month ago, and which I could still wear most days now in the sunny afternoons.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Seasons of Life
It has been a long time since I wrote, and that usually means that I have been out of Spain. This time was an unscheduled trip, because I have been home in the U.S. with my birth family as my mother, Mary, passed from this life, and for two weeks afterwards. Those several days that we (four sisters) spent together reliving our earlier lives growing up and renewing our commitment to each other as a family were precious.
Part of the reason I first started this blog was to share my experiences here in Spain with my mother. She was nearing 80 when she "got onto the computer" in order to keep in touch by email with her wide-spread family and good friends from across several decades of her life. She learned to use many functions, even though she never distinguished between the hardware, software, email, and the Web--it was all "the computer." Later as her eyesight diminished she had to stop using the computer herself, but in the early days of Sundays in Spain, I tried to keep posts short enough so they could be printed out on a single page by one of my sisters and read to her. I have gotten rather lax, I am afraid.
In 2005 when I had to tell my mother that I was selling my house, which I had recently bought in Indianapolis in order to be within a couple hours' drive of my parents, and moving to Spain full-time, I was distressed and scared. My mother at that time was facing the daily challenges of living with the increasing effects of the Alzheimer's with which my father had been diagnosed a few years earlier. I felt guilty leaving them to be so far away "just" because my husband was ready to return to Europe during his retirement years.
My mother fully supported my move. I was near tears as I struggled to tell her that we would no longer be coming home to the U.S. for half the year, but she immediately said, "Oh! It's just like when your father and I went to Florida!" Indeed, they had left Ohio and moved to Florida for their retirement years at a time when she was just about the same age as I was moving to Spain. They spent 20 years there before returning to Cincinnati for the last years of their lives. Never in all those last years did she ever express displeasure or encourage guilt that I had moved to Spain. She even made a trip alone to our home in Roquetas de Mar in 2006 at Christmas time to see how we lived.
In some ways my life here in one of the "Floridas of Europe" is like my mother's life during the happy time my parents spent in a retirement village in Orlando. In many ways it is different. I try to write about the similarities and the differences, and I try to live each day happily.
Part of the reason I first started this blog was to share my experiences here in Spain with my mother. She was nearing 80 when she "got onto the computer" in order to keep in touch by email with her wide-spread family and good friends from across several decades of her life. She learned to use many functions, even though she never distinguished between the hardware, software, email, and the Web--it was all "the computer." Later as her eyesight diminished she had to stop using the computer herself, but in the early days of Sundays in Spain, I tried to keep posts short enough so they could be printed out on a single page by one of my sisters and read to her. I have gotten rather lax, I am afraid.
In 2005 when I had to tell my mother that I was selling my house, which I had recently bought in Indianapolis in order to be within a couple hours' drive of my parents, and moving to Spain full-time, I was distressed and scared. My mother at that time was facing the daily challenges of living with the increasing effects of the Alzheimer's with which my father had been diagnosed a few years earlier. I felt guilty leaving them to be so far away "just" because my husband was ready to return to Europe during his retirement years.
My mother fully supported my move. I was near tears as I struggled to tell her that we would no longer be coming home to the U.S. for half the year, but she immediately said, "Oh! It's just like when your father and I went to Florida!" Indeed, they had left Ohio and moved to Florida for their retirement years at a time when she was just about the same age as I was moving to Spain. They spent 20 years there before returning to Cincinnati for the last years of their lives. Never in all those last years did she ever express displeasure or encourage guilt that I had moved to Spain. She even made a trip alone to our home in Roquetas de Mar in 2006 at Christmas time to see how we lived.
In some ways my life here in one of the "Floridas of Europe" is like my mother's life during the happy time my parents spent in a retirement village in Orlando. In many ways it is different. I try to write about the similarities and the differences, and I try to live each day happily.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
The Foreign Community Sometimes Speaks Spanish
Ever since I wrote about the foreign community speaking English here in Spain--regardless of where they were originally from--I have been on the lookout for incidents in which foreigners did not speak English, and particularly, for when they spoke Spanish.
The first time was a success for me, though I did not originally realize that the person to whom I was speaking Spanish was not Spanish. I went to the dentist for a routine check-up and spoke English with the dentist, which might be expected when one goes to an establishment called British Dental Service. But I was also introduced to the hygienist, who had been out on maternity leave when I was there six months earlier; she greeted me in English, but with an accent. So I decided that when I returned later for my cleaning (no, I do not know why these had to be separate appointments) I would speak to her in Spanish. After all, conversation is going to be limited in duration anyway when one of the parties is having her teeth cleaned. When I returned the next day, I greeted her with "Hola, que bien dia hoy," or something like that.
She visibly expressed relief. "¡Ah, tu hablas español!" "Si, un poquito, y intento hablarlo si no te preocupes," I responded. And we continued chatting for a few minutes before she got down to business with the bib and the scraping and the spraying and then polishing, and I never had to levantar la mano (raise my hand) at any time as a signal to get her to stop. She only slipped into English a couple times, with routine admonishments which I am sure, in her practice, come easier to her in English than in Spanish.
It was before we started the cleaning that she told me that she is not Spanish--she is German but has lived in Spain for about ten years. Since I knew she had been out on maternity leave, I could ask about her baby (a girl) and who took care of her while she and her husband (partner, she corrected me) were working. Well, the good news is that her partner was able to do that; the bad news is that he has been out of work for eight months, a casualty of the construction crisis. I neglected to ask her what language she and her partner, an immigrant from another European country I do not recall, spoke together, and what language(s) they are using with the baby. But I should have a chance again in another five months or so.
We have also had some minor renovations done to the house in the past month. These were undertaken by a fine workman who knows the houses in our development very well and who everyone calls Christo. He drove up in a truck labeled Hristo. Hristo is originally from Bulgaria and has been in Spain for eight years or so and has established a good business, though it, too, is having challenges with the economic crisis. Nevertheless he has a compatriot who works with him; during the week that these two Bulgarians spent in the house building a closet, installing a kitchen fan, and moving the "boiler," they spoke in Bulgarian but we spoke primarily in Spanish. Hristo's helper knows only Spanish (in addition to Bulgarian, of course) and he and I were able to communicate very well indeed. There is something about foreigners speaking a common foreign language that makes it easier to understand, I think. With Hristo himself, I could speak Spanish, and we generally started out that way, but we often drifted over into English. One reason is that Hristo wanted to be very certain I understood what he was doing, and another, I think, is that he wanted to practice his English. After all, probably most of his clients are native English or English-as-a-common-language speakers. Part of the job involved moving the hot water heater--or boiler, as Hristo called it--and I felt much more comfortable talking about the calentador in Spanish, because to me a boiler is somewhat larger and has to do with a central heating system, which I did not think we were having installed and certainly had not budgeted for.
Perhaps the most satisfying experience I have had speaking Spanish with other foreigners, though, has been in my new Spanish class. Sponsored by the town of Algorfa, this class runs once a week for an hour and a half from October through May--for only 70 euros. I am enrolled in the advanced conversation class, with nine other immigrants from England, Scotland, and Vietnam. We have had three classes so far, and it is Spanish only in class. The instructor is a wonderful young Spanish woman, born and brought up in Algorfa, who is very adept at explaining--in Spanish--any word or concept that comes up in the reading or conversation. When the sense of the unknown word just does not sink in, you may occasionally hear a whispered English equivalent from one of the other students who "got it" before you did, but this does not happen very often. We are even doing jokes in Spanish now, though I can't translate the slightly scurrilous one about the stingy Catalan throwing out or letting fall ... because it just doesn't translate.
The first time was a success for me, though I did not originally realize that the person to whom I was speaking Spanish was not Spanish. I went to the dentist for a routine check-up and spoke English with the dentist, which might be expected when one goes to an establishment called British Dental Service. But I was also introduced to the hygienist, who had been out on maternity leave when I was there six months earlier; she greeted me in English, but with an accent. So I decided that when I returned later for my cleaning (no, I do not know why these had to be separate appointments) I would speak to her in Spanish. After all, conversation is going to be limited in duration anyway when one of the parties is having her teeth cleaned. When I returned the next day, I greeted her with "Hola, que bien dia hoy," or something like that.
She visibly expressed relief. "¡Ah, tu hablas español!" "Si, un poquito, y intento hablarlo si no te preocupes," I responded. And we continued chatting for a few minutes before she got down to business with the bib and the scraping and the spraying and then polishing, and I never had to levantar la mano (raise my hand) at any time as a signal to get her to stop. She only slipped into English a couple times, with routine admonishments which I am sure, in her practice, come easier to her in English than in Spanish.
It was before we started the cleaning that she told me that she is not Spanish--she is German but has lived in Spain for about ten years. Since I knew she had been out on maternity leave, I could ask about her baby (a girl) and who took care of her while she and her husband (partner, she corrected me) were working. Well, the good news is that her partner was able to do that; the bad news is that he has been out of work for eight months, a casualty of the construction crisis. I neglected to ask her what language she and her partner, an immigrant from another European country I do not recall, spoke together, and what language(s) they are using with the baby. But I should have a chance again in another five months or so.
We have also had some minor renovations done to the house in the past month. These were undertaken by a fine workman who knows the houses in our development very well and who everyone calls Christo. He drove up in a truck labeled Hristo. Hristo is originally from Bulgaria and has been in Spain for eight years or so and has established a good business, though it, too, is having challenges with the economic crisis. Nevertheless he has a compatriot who works with him; during the week that these two Bulgarians spent in the house building a closet, installing a kitchen fan, and moving the "boiler," they spoke in Bulgarian but we spoke primarily in Spanish. Hristo's helper knows only Spanish (in addition to Bulgarian, of course) and he and I were able to communicate very well indeed. There is something about foreigners speaking a common foreign language that makes it easier to understand, I think. With Hristo himself, I could speak Spanish, and we generally started out that way, but we often drifted over into English. One reason is that Hristo wanted to be very certain I understood what he was doing, and another, I think, is that he wanted to practice his English. After all, probably most of his clients are native English or English-as-a-common-language speakers. Part of the job involved moving the hot water heater--or boiler, as Hristo called it--and I felt much more comfortable talking about the calentador in Spanish, because to me a boiler is somewhat larger and has to do with a central heating system, which I did not think we were having installed and certainly had not budgeted for.
Perhaps the most satisfying experience I have had speaking Spanish with other foreigners, though, has been in my new Spanish class. Sponsored by the town of Algorfa, this class runs once a week for an hour and a half from October through May--for only 70 euros. I am enrolled in the advanced conversation class, with nine other immigrants from England, Scotland, and Vietnam. We have had three classes so far, and it is Spanish only in class. The instructor is a wonderful young Spanish woman, born and brought up in Algorfa, who is very adept at explaining--in Spanish--any word or concept that comes up in the reading or conversation. When the sense of the unknown word just does not sink in, you may occasionally hear a whispered English equivalent from one of the other students who "got it" before you did, but this does not happen very often. We are even doing jokes in Spanish now, though I can't translate the slightly scurrilous one about the stingy Catalan throwing out or letting fall ... because it just doesn't translate.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Fiesta Nacional de España
Yesterday, October 12, was a national holiday, one of only two per year in Spain--the other numerous holidays are either religious-based or local/regional holidays. Looking back, I see that I first wrote about this holiday two years ago and at that time cited the Wikipedia page from Spain in explanation. This year I have discovered the page in English, which speaks briefly of the history of this day in Spain and the many roles it plays.
The day began as most holidays do, with firecrackers the night before, but also with the annoyance of cancellations of two appointments--hair and house-cleaning--because heavy fines are threatened if workers go to work on a holiday. For people in the leisure and hospitality industry it's a different story, however. The bars and restaurants are open all day, and, I discovered on another holiday recently, the fitness center I go to is allowed to be open "in the morning." That means from opening time (7:00 AM on weekdays) until 2:00 PM.
I got on my warm-up bicycle just before 10:00 and plugged my earbuds into the TV sound outlet. We have a choice of English and Spanish, and the fitness center has become my primary place for watching Spanish TV and a free Spanish lesson. I caught the morning news program, where I noticed among other events that Spain plans to bring home four of the military planes it had deployed in Libya on Saturday. The regular newspaper round-up, where news headlines from various newspapers are presented and then discussed by a panel of commentators whom I partially understand, was cancelled this hour in lieu of the festivities that were to be brought live from Madrid celebrating the day.
I had to unplug from my individual TV screen and the sound as I passed through most other parts of my routine, but I could see the beginning of a parade on one of the larger screens at one end of the gym (the screen at the other end was showing, for the umpteenth day, "highlights" of the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor). I had been told that there would be long military parades, but this one had no tanks or vehicles or even soldiers marching with guns. Instead there were men with large plumed hats from an earlier era, riding horses. As minutes passed they arrived at, or the camera shifted to, the Plaza de Neptuno in Madrid and then I recognized King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia moving down a very long reception line of dignitaries. The king was dressed in a military uniform but Queen Sofia was in a regular street dress and handbag--I wonder why queens always carry handbags with short handles and never are allowed to have a shoulder bag. Women in the line curtsied before the royalty but also shook hands. Men shook hands with the queen and king and in addition gave a military salute to the king if they were in uniform, but no other sign of deference comparable to a curtsy--even the quick little dip that it was--did I see.
By the time I was on the treadmill and could plug in again, the official program was starting. First off was a salute to the fallen, heroes who had not returned from any number of wars or military actions for an unspecified number of years. People sang a very moving song of remembrance--"La Muerte no es el final" (Death is not the end). Lyrics were printed on the screen, and I have found this and other versions at YouTube. Then there was an impressive flyover of jet planes. I was trying to pay attention to the commentary about guardia real and guardia civil, but I don't have much recollection this morning of the rest of the spoken ceremonies. As I left the treadmill a larger desfile was commencing; presumably this was where the military aspects were paraded.
That was the end of the holiday for me. I stopped and bought cereal and cat food at one of the small grocery stores allowed to be open until 2:00 and went home to laundry, lunch, and computer work--but all in a quiet house newly released from the labor of contractors making adjustments to the kitchen and a new water heater closet. Quiet, that is, until bedtime, when the fireworks started again in celebration of the Fiesta Nacional de España.
The day began as most holidays do, with firecrackers the night before, but also with the annoyance of cancellations of two appointments--hair and house-cleaning--because heavy fines are threatened if workers go to work on a holiday. For people in the leisure and hospitality industry it's a different story, however. The bars and restaurants are open all day, and, I discovered on another holiday recently, the fitness center I go to is allowed to be open "in the morning." That means from opening time (7:00 AM on weekdays) until 2:00 PM.
I got on my warm-up bicycle just before 10:00 and plugged my earbuds into the TV sound outlet. We have a choice of English and Spanish, and the fitness center has become my primary place for watching Spanish TV and a free Spanish lesson. I caught the morning news program, where I noticed among other events that Spain plans to bring home four of the military planes it had deployed in Libya on Saturday. The regular newspaper round-up, where news headlines from various newspapers are presented and then discussed by a panel of commentators whom I partially understand, was cancelled this hour in lieu of the festivities that were to be brought live from Madrid celebrating the day.
I had to unplug from my individual TV screen and the sound as I passed through most other parts of my routine, but I could see the beginning of a parade on one of the larger screens at one end of the gym (the screen at the other end was showing, for the umpteenth day, "highlights" of the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor). I had been told that there would be long military parades, but this one had no tanks or vehicles or even soldiers marching with guns. Instead there were men with large plumed hats from an earlier era, riding horses. As minutes passed they arrived at, or the camera shifted to, the Plaza de Neptuno in Madrid and then I recognized King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia moving down a very long reception line of dignitaries. The king was dressed in a military uniform but Queen Sofia was in a regular street dress and handbag--I wonder why queens always carry handbags with short handles and never are allowed to have a shoulder bag. Women in the line curtsied before the royalty but also shook hands. Men shook hands with the queen and king and in addition gave a military salute to the king if they were in uniform, but no other sign of deference comparable to a curtsy--even the quick little dip that it was--did I see.
By the time I was on the treadmill and could plug in again, the official program was starting. First off was a salute to the fallen, heroes who had not returned from any number of wars or military actions for an unspecified number of years. People sang a very moving song of remembrance--"La Muerte no es el final" (Death is not the end). Lyrics were printed on the screen, and I have found this and other versions at YouTube. Then there was an impressive flyover of jet planes. I was trying to pay attention to the commentary about guardia real and guardia civil, but I don't have much recollection this morning of the rest of the spoken ceremonies. As I left the treadmill a larger desfile was commencing; presumably this was where the military aspects were paraded.
That was the end of the holiday for me. I stopped and bought cereal and cat food at one of the small grocery stores allowed to be open until 2:00 and went home to laundry, lunch, and computer work--but all in a quiet house newly released from the labor of contractors making adjustments to the kitchen and a new water heater closet. Quiet, that is, until bedtime, when the fireworks started again in celebration of the Fiesta Nacional de España.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Continued Sunny Skies
This Sunday in Spain dawned clear and cool and I drove Johannes up to the cave art exhibit at 9:00 and then returned home for a shower, an hour and a half of work, and some little maintenance jobs pertaining to the house and my person. Then I headed over to the Sunday morning outdoor market close to our house. One of the wonderful features about this and most outdoor markets here in Spain is the offering of rotisserie-grilled chickens. They give a captivating aroma to the market grounds throughout the morning, and people line up to purchase one or two before leaving the market. I think that most people in Spain must have grilled chicken for Sunday dinner--you can even buy thin French fried potatoes to go with the chicken.
I stocked up on raisins and almonds for our breakfast cereal, and tomatoes and bananas for our lunchtime salads, and then on my way out I bought one of those chickens. I had previously packed some cherry tomatoes, sliced carrots, and cucumbers into a cooler, and I drove straight to the caves for a little picnic. It was a peaceful fall morning. Four Norwegians were looking at paintings as I arrived, and two Spaniards arrived before the Norwegians left, and we had interesting conversations with both groups. So it was after 2:00 before we were able to enjoy our little repast, and we sat in peaceful solitude broken only by the strains of Chopin from the CD player and cock-a-doodle-do from a neighboring rooster. Later we packed up and made our way down through Benihofar--and the Wheel of Tapas was still going on, so we stopped at an English bar and had a tapa of Spanish tortilla (my favorite) and a tidbit of serrano ham and tomato. This particular bar was in a part of the village which we had not explored before, and right down the strip from Route 66, allegedly an American restaurant. Unfortunately they were not open until later, so we will have to return some time in the future to see whether there really is an American connection there.
We wanted to make a reservation for dinner later on in the week at a restaurant in town, and when we stopped we were greeted by an English friend who had brought a Spanish lady friend out to see "how the English live." For those of us who have been married to the same person for eons, it is amusing and inspiring to see others of our age (or almost) who have never been married but who have not given up trying to meet someone, and particularly when they are living in a foreign country. We had a lively two-language conversation with this chap and his new compañera and hope to see her again. She spoke good English, but I was able to communicate with her mostly in Spanish, and that is gratifying indeed.
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| View from the Rojales Cave |
We wanted to make a reservation for dinner later on in the week at a restaurant in town, and when we stopped we were greeted by an English friend who had brought a Spanish lady friend out to see "how the English live." For those of us who have been married to the same person for eons, it is amusing and inspiring to see others of our age (or almost) who have never been married but who have not given up trying to meet someone, and particularly when they are living in a foreign country. We had a lively two-language conversation with this chap and his new compañera and hope to see her again. She spoke good English, but I was able to communicate with her mostly in Spanish, and that is gratifying indeed.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Las Cuevas del Rodeo Art Exhibition
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| Painting by Johannes Bjørner |
It would be comfortable to say that I happened on to this exhibit casually and by accident, as I happened by the first day of school in the colegio next door a couple weeks ago. But that would not be truthful, since for the last month I have been living with the artist while he assembled more than 50 paintings in the living and dining rooms of our house, together with myriad paraphernalia for hanging them, piping in music, and providing light refreshments on opening day. Friday this week he took the paintings out to the caves and the walls throughout the entire house are now bare--and Saturday we went out to hang them and set up for the opening from 11:00--2:00 PM Sunday morning.
And then this morning dawned and we were out the door at a little past 9:00 to do final preparations for the inauguration: buy some ice, move the white wine to the cooler, cut the cheese, and set up the snacks and drinks kindly provided by the municipality. Two good English friends arrived and took over the duties behind the bar, leaving both the artist and me free to mingle with guests who spilled in suddenly at 11:05 and kept us busy until 12:30. The crowd thinned out a bit then, but new people continued coming even past the 2:00 official close. Should I be surprised that the first group were mostly Scandinavians, then we had Germans and English, but the Spanish made their appearance during the last half "official" hour? I was happy for my husband's sake that so many people showed up and enjoyed the viewing and made several purchases, but I was surprised and especially touched myself to meet a woman who reads this blog. Since I write mainly for my friends and family at a distance, it was a real treat to meet a reader face-to-face, on this Sunday in Spain.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Mathematical Puzzles and IVA, Spain's VAT
Spain has a VAT (Value Added Tax) of 18 percent, called IVA. That sounds high until you consider that Denmark's VAT is 25 percent. These make 7 percent or even 11 percent sales tax rates sound almost silly. But there are two differences in sales tax in the U.S. and the IVA I pay in Spain. The first difference is that IVA is charged by only one jurisdiction in Spain--the national government. In the U.S., on the other hand, sales tax can be charged by the state, the county, the city, or all of them--or some other government entity that you don't know about. Then, too, the sales taxes and various usage taxes can easily add up to 18 or maybe even 25 percent--as I am reminded every time I check out of a hotel at a conference.
The second difference in taxes is that in the U.S. consumer prices are listed without the tax, so that you generally get a receipt that shows the price of the item and the amount of the tax imposed on it, which adds up to a price that is probably higher than you thought and certainly higher than you wanted. In Spain, and everywhere that I know that uses the VAT, the displayed price of the item includes the tax. From the price you pay, the merchant presumably computes and sends the appropriate amount to the tax authorities. You don't have to think about it and you may not even know what it is. It makes it much more tolerable to pay a higher tax if the amount you are paying is not constantly thrown in your face.
Still, I noticed awhile ago that some grocery stores that I frequent include information on the receipt showing how much tax was charged. So I have been saving my receipts and trying to figure out the Spanish IVA taxation. Underneath the cumulated purchase total (the total), the amount you tender (the efectivo) and the change you get (the cambio) is a little chart like the one below.
BASE IVA CUOTA IMPORTE
2,76 8 0,23 2,99
2,53 18 0,45 2,98
3,25 4 0,14 3,39
Looking at charts like this were probably what first made me aware that not everything was charged at the 18 percent rate. Some items were apparently charged at 8 percent; others at 4 percent. Of course I wondered which items belonged in which group.
It is not as easy to find out as one would think. Remember, the displayed price includes the IVA, and the real item price (the base, as I learned) is never shown--except on this receipt. When I had accumulated enough of these little receipts and finally remembered to examine them at home--and got out my calculator and magnifying glass--I confirmed that the cuota is the amount of the tax on its corresponding base, charged at the appropriate IVA rate. The importe is the sum of the base and cuota and would be the amount shown as the price of the item, if I had only bought one item in this category. Of course that seldom happens, so the game on the way home from the grocery store has become figuring out which items purchased add up to the amount of each importe, because if that can be determined I will know which items are taxed at which rates.
One day this week we went out just to buy water, and we came out of the store with only 11 items. That's a workable number, especially since there were five bottles of gaseosa (1,5 liter bottles of flavored water) at 26 centimos each and two cartons of milk at 1,22 euros each. Add to that a bottle of white wine at 1 euro exactly and one of red at 1,98. Then the fresh mushrooms at 95 centimos and the luxury purchase of Caesar salad dressing at 1,69. So I was able to figure out which items added up to the importe in the three categories above.
This is the point where, if you are so inclined, you should do the math before scrolling down for the answer.
Here is a review and a clue:
18 percent. The normal or default amount, applied to every consumer purchase unless specifically exempted.
8 percent. Applied to alimentary and sanitary products, for animals as well as humans. Specifically excluded from this category are alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, tobacco, cosmetics, and products of personal hygiene.
4 percent. For items of "basic necessity," specifically
- Bread and "cereals" for making it.
- Milk, cheese and eggs.
- Fruits, vegetables, legumes and natural root vegetables.
The answer:
I had accumulated lots of other receipts, so I took this opportunity to look through them to see if I could learn any more about the differences between basic necessity 4 percent items and the normal food rate items at 8 percent. The "cereals" for making bread do not include oatmeal or corn flakes--I guess they mean that "flour" is 4 percent. But cat food is charged at the same rate as general people food--I'm sure that Goldie approves. And fresh fruits and vegetables--of which I buy many--are 4 percent, though canned corn is 8 percent. The store where I buy most of my frozen vegetables doesn't provide this nice little accounting, so I don't yet know whether frozen is better (taxwise) than canned. On the other hand, that store tells me how much I would have spent in the old currency of pesetas! I hope that is information I never need to use.
The good news is that some eye drops I bought at the pharmacy also are just 4 percent and that food and drink consumed at a cafe, bar, or restaurant seem to be just 8 percent, regardless of whether alcohol is involved or not, though it may take a little more research to verify that. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my 4 percent purchases were a substantial part of my grocery basket, and now I can create a little game to try to keep those high, because they obviously are applied to foodstuffs that are not only basic but nutritious. By the time I went through most of my receipts, however, I had a headache and had consumed most of the afternoon. It's now almost dinner time, and I'm going downstairs for an 18 percent beverage.
The second difference in taxes is that in the U.S. consumer prices are listed without the tax, so that you generally get a receipt that shows the price of the item and the amount of the tax imposed on it, which adds up to a price that is probably higher than you thought and certainly higher than you wanted. In Spain, and everywhere that I know that uses the VAT, the displayed price of the item includes the tax. From the price you pay, the merchant presumably computes and sends the appropriate amount to the tax authorities. You don't have to think about it and you may not even know what it is. It makes it much more tolerable to pay a higher tax if the amount you are paying is not constantly thrown in your face.
Still, I noticed awhile ago that some grocery stores that I frequent include information on the receipt showing how much tax was charged. So I have been saving my receipts and trying to figure out the Spanish IVA taxation. Underneath the cumulated purchase total (the total), the amount you tender (the efectivo) and the change you get (the cambio) is a little chart like the one below.
BASE IVA CUOTA IMPORTE
2,76 8 0,23 2,99
2,53 18 0,45 2,98
3,25 4 0,14 3,39
Looking at charts like this were probably what first made me aware that not everything was charged at the 18 percent rate. Some items were apparently charged at 8 percent; others at 4 percent. Of course I wondered which items belonged in which group.
It is not as easy to find out as one would think. Remember, the displayed price includes the IVA, and the real item price (the base, as I learned) is never shown--except on this receipt. When I had accumulated enough of these little receipts and finally remembered to examine them at home--and got out my calculator and magnifying glass--I confirmed that the cuota is the amount of the tax on its corresponding base, charged at the appropriate IVA rate. The importe is the sum of the base and cuota and would be the amount shown as the price of the item, if I had only bought one item in this category. Of course that seldom happens, so the game on the way home from the grocery store has become figuring out which items purchased add up to the amount of each importe, because if that can be determined I will know which items are taxed at which rates.
One day this week we went out just to buy water, and we came out of the store with only 11 items. That's a workable number, especially since there were five bottles of gaseosa (1,5 liter bottles of flavored water) at 26 centimos each and two cartons of milk at 1,22 euros each. Add to that a bottle of white wine at 1 euro exactly and one of red at 1,98. Then the fresh mushrooms at 95 centimos and the luxury purchase of Caesar salad dressing at 1,69. So I was able to figure out which items added up to the importe in the three categories above.
This is the point where, if you are so inclined, you should do the math before scrolling down for the answer.
Here is a review and a clue:
18 percent. The normal or default amount, applied to every consumer purchase unless specifically exempted.
8 percent. Applied to alimentary and sanitary products, for animals as well as humans. Specifically excluded from this category are alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, tobacco, cosmetics, and products of personal hygiene.
4 percent. For items of "basic necessity," specifically
- Bread and "cereals" for making it.
- Milk, cheese and eggs.
- Fruits, vegetables, legumes and natural root vegetables.
The answer:
- The wine was charged at the default rate of 18 percent. Not a surprise.
- The gaseosa was charged at 8 percent. This is where I learned that gaseosa is apparently considered water (even though carbonated and with some flavoring) rather than a soft drink (refresco), which would have been charged at 18%. Also charged at 8% was the bottled ready-made salad dressing, which surprised me, because I consider this a luxury rather than a regular food item (you can probably tell that this is not my salad dressing).
- Both milk and mushrooms were charged at 4 percent, as basic necessities.
I had accumulated lots of other receipts, so I took this opportunity to look through them to see if I could learn any more about the differences between basic necessity 4 percent items and the normal food rate items at 8 percent. The "cereals" for making bread do not include oatmeal or corn flakes--I guess they mean that "flour" is 4 percent. But cat food is charged at the same rate as general people food--I'm sure that Goldie approves. And fresh fruits and vegetables--of which I buy many--are 4 percent, though canned corn is 8 percent. The store where I buy most of my frozen vegetables doesn't provide this nice little accounting, so I don't yet know whether frozen is better (taxwise) than canned. On the other hand, that store tells me how much I would have spent in the old currency of pesetas! I hope that is information I never need to use.
The good news is that some eye drops I bought at the pharmacy also are just 4 percent and that food and drink consumed at a cafe, bar, or restaurant seem to be just 8 percent, regardless of whether alcohol is involved or not, though it may take a little more research to verify that. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my 4 percent purchases were a substantial part of my grocery basket, and now I can create a little game to try to keep those high, because they obviously are applied to foodstuffs that are not only basic but nutritious. By the time I went through most of my receipts, however, I had a headache and had consumed most of the afternoon. It's now almost dinner time, and I'm going downstairs for an 18 percent beverage.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Signs of Autumn
Someone mentioned that the British use "autumn" while Americans use "fall" to denote the season that comes after summer. I haven't really observed that yet in my verbal encounters with the Brits here in Spain, though my Diccionario Cambridge Klett Compact confirms that the translation of the Spanish otoño is "autumn, fall (Am)." I have always preferred "autumn" because "fall" seems so, well, happenstance. Autumn is a destination--you don't just fall into it when summer gets tired. One thing is sure: we are all tired of summer now, at least those of us who have been here for the past several months. Those who escaped to northern European climes for July and August and are now returning to the Costa appreciate the still-high temperatures, since they have been experiencing cold and rainy weather for much of the summer. But I'm not here to talk about climate change.
Nearly all with whom I email have spoken to me with pleasure of cooler days and that wonderful crisp feeling in the air that autumn brings. It's cooler in the morning and later in the evenings here too, now, and it's dark in the mornings until 8:00 and gets dark again less than twelve hours later. But temperatures still register in the 90s F. at lunch time on the thermometer in the shade outside the sun room. My office air conditioner is broken, sending out hot air instead of cool, and I waited several days last week for the repairman to fit us into his busy schedule, and then he didn't come on Thursday afternoon between 5:00 and 6:00 as promised--or on Friday, either. So I do not yet feel like fall, but I am definitely looking forward to autumn.
There are signs. The returning northern Europeans, for a start. Our petanca games are filling up with people again compared with the sparse participation in the summer. Other social activities are starting up and the calendar is getting lots of notations. And I wondered this morning whether the grocery store would be open today (it's allowed to be open on Sunday during the summer only) but then remembered that I can count on today and next Sunday, through the month of September.
The surest sign of autumn for those of us who live on the northern side of the equator is the beginning of school, and school has started. First come the vuelta al cole ads in the circulars and large placards in the stores, announcing special prices on supplies, clothing and whatnot for the return to colegio, which is primary or elementary school--not college--in Spain. And then comes the start of school itself, September 8 according to one friend with two youngsters who attend, but it must vary a little bit from town to town.
Last Monday I happened on to a small colegio in Rojales at 12:25 PM. About 20 people were standing around the gated entrance. A few men, many women, some young and fashionable, a couple older, in Spanish grandmotherly style. Two women in light-colored abaya street-length cloaks and hijab headscarves. They were all waiting for their children to be released from school for the day, and within a couple minutes of my walking back to stand on the other side of the street after we parked the car, here they came. Tiny, happy children, with big smiles on their faces, walking out two by two through the school courtyard and each one greeted by a parent or grandparent or other caregiver. I asked and was told that yes, indeed, this was their very first day at school. They couldn't have been more than four years old. They soon walked off with their escorts--there were only a couple waiting cars--and that was the end of this first school day. They had had an exciting time, and there was still a long afternoon to enjoy in the sun.
Every day this week I have heard the reverberations of the big school bus that transports a few children from our neighborhood to and from their colegio in the center of Algorfa, a few miles away. It comes at precisely 1:25, on its return-from-school trip. I have not heard it yet on its regular afternoon run. Afternoon school sessions only start when cooler weather comes, presumably in October.
Nearly all with whom I email have spoken to me with pleasure of cooler days and that wonderful crisp feeling in the air that autumn brings. It's cooler in the morning and later in the evenings here too, now, and it's dark in the mornings until 8:00 and gets dark again less than twelve hours later. But temperatures still register in the 90s F. at lunch time on the thermometer in the shade outside the sun room. My office air conditioner is broken, sending out hot air instead of cool, and I waited several days last week for the repairman to fit us into his busy schedule, and then he didn't come on Thursday afternoon between 5:00 and 6:00 as promised--or on Friday, either. So I do not yet feel like fall, but I am definitely looking forward to autumn.
There are signs. The returning northern Europeans, for a start. Our petanca games are filling up with people again compared with the sparse participation in the summer. Other social activities are starting up and the calendar is getting lots of notations. And I wondered this morning whether the grocery store would be open today (it's allowed to be open on Sunday during the summer only) but then remembered that I can count on today and next Sunday, through the month of September.
The surest sign of autumn for those of us who live on the northern side of the equator is the beginning of school, and school has started. First come the vuelta al cole ads in the circulars and large placards in the stores, announcing special prices on supplies, clothing and whatnot for the return to colegio, which is primary or elementary school--not college--in Spain. And then comes the start of school itself, September 8 according to one friend with two youngsters who attend, but it must vary a little bit from town to town.
Last Monday I happened on to a small colegio in Rojales at 12:25 PM. About 20 people were standing around the gated entrance. A few men, many women, some young and fashionable, a couple older, in Spanish grandmotherly style. Two women in light-colored abaya street-length cloaks and hijab headscarves. They were all waiting for their children to be released from school for the day, and within a couple minutes of my walking back to stand on the other side of the street after we parked the car, here they came. Tiny, happy children, with big smiles on their faces, walking out two by two through the school courtyard and each one greeted by a parent or grandparent or other caregiver. I asked and was told that yes, indeed, this was their very first day at school. They couldn't have been more than four years old. They soon walked off with their escorts--there were only a couple waiting cars--and that was the end of this first school day. They had had an exciting time, and there was still a long afternoon to enjoy in the sun.
Every day this week I have heard the reverberations of the big school bus that transports a few children from our neighborhood to and from their colegio in the center of Algorfa, a few miles away. It comes at precisely 1:25, on its return-from-school trip. I have not heard it yet on its regular afternoon run. Afternoon school sessions only start when cooler weather comes, presumably in October.
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Foreign Community Speaks English
I always have a stack of newspapers beside the bed for night time reading, and last night just before I dropped off I was reading the latest Spaniaposten, a Norwegian bi-weekly. The article that caught my eye was a short one reporting on another article from the regional (Valenciano) newspaper Información. The subject was the large foreign (non-Spanish) population on the coast immediately south of Torrevieja and the fact that English is the predominant language. It was an interesting article and I will offer my translation from the Norwegian:
________________________
Orihuela.
NEWSPAPER CRITICAL OF LACK OF INTEGRATION
The large number of foreigners who live here and their lack of interest in learning Spanish have changed many areas in Vega Baja, especially Orihuela Costa, to more of an English colony than a Spanish area.
So begins an article in the regional newspaper Información. Almost 30,000 foreigners are registered as resident in this area a little south of Torrevieja.
MOSTLY BRITS
The largest group is the British, followed by Irish and Germans. Scandinavians also make up a large part of the immigrants and vacationers on this part of the coast.
OWN COLONY
The Spanish paper writes that immigrants integrate themselves here only to a small degree. The majority of foreigners create their own colonies, shopping in stores managed by their own countrymen where they can speak their own language, and they have little interest in learning Spanish as long as the foreign community can communicate among themselves in English.
USE ENGLISH
Local businesses use English to attract vacationers and residents from many of the large developments found in the area. Información writes that the area is full of "supermarkets," "grocery shops," "restaurants," and "irish pubs." [sic] Few establishments use Spanish to advertise their specials. The lack of use of Spanish in the area has made it almost obligatory to be able to speak English in order to get a job in the area, the paper goes on to say.
________________________
That is (my translation of) the article in Norwegian describing the Spanish article for its own readers (there are thousands of Norwegians along the entire Costa Blanca, plus many Swedes and Danes, and the odd non-Scandinavian person who can understand one of those languages). My reading suggests that the Norwegian article was offered without judgment or comment.
This morning I decided to find the original Spanish article and see whether it was equally non-judgmental.
Spaniaposten did a good reporting job, I think, but the original article was longer and had a few other tidbits.
To begin with, I like the Spanish title and lead:
With an English Accent
Tourists and residents along the coast of Orihuela hardly know what Spanish is.
The article goes on to say that Orihuela Costa is a small piece of Europe, but more international than many European capitals. In addition to what was reported in Spaniaposten, the original focuses on the need for Spaniards to learn other languages--English at the least--in order to get any job dealing with the public and mentions that a media explosion of periodicals, websites, and radio in several languages is burgeoning. Finally--and one wonders why Spaniaposten does not mention it--several lines were devoted to describing free Spanish courses starting in mid-September in the town of Pilar de la Horadada, on a basic and intermediate level, to promote "faster integration."
Well, integration may be beyond the range of possibilities, but it's obvious that many municipalities are stretching themselves to offer language courses to expose foreigners to even a little Spanish. We don't live on Orihuela Costa, but we live within a half hour of it, and there are probably nearly as many foreigners in our inland area. I'm still waiting to hear from my town about when this fall's language classes will start, even though they are not free. It is true that one has to work to expose oneself to native Spanish-speakers in this part of Spain. A "peculiar situation,"indeed, as Información calls it.
________________________
Orihuela.
NEWSPAPER CRITICAL OF LACK OF INTEGRATION
The large number of foreigners who live here and their lack of interest in learning Spanish have changed many areas in Vega Baja, especially Orihuela Costa, to more of an English colony than a Spanish area.
So begins an article in the regional newspaper Información. Almost 30,000 foreigners are registered as resident in this area a little south of Torrevieja.
MOSTLY BRITS
The largest group is the British, followed by Irish and Germans. Scandinavians also make up a large part of the immigrants and vacationers on this part of the coast.
OWN COLONY
The Spanish paper writes that immigrants integrate themselves here only to a small degree. The majority of foreigners create their own colonies, shopping in stores managed by their own countrymen where they can speak their own language, and they have little interest in learning Spanish as long as the foreign community can communicate among themselves in English.
USE ENGLISH
Local businesses use English to attract vacationers and residents from many of the large developments found in the area. Información writes that the area is full of "supermarkets," "grocery shops," "restaurants," and "irish pubs." [sic] Few establishments use Spanish to advertise their specials. The lack of use of Spanish in the area has made it almost obligatory to be able to speak English in order to get a job in the area, the paper goes on to say.
________________________
That is (my translation of) the article in Norwegian describing the Spanish article for its own readers (there are thousands of Norwegians along the entire Costa Blanca, plus many Swedes and Danes, and the odd non-Scandinavian person who can understand one of those languages). My reading suggests that the Norwegian article was offered without judgment or comment.
This morning I decided to find the original Spanish article and see whether it was equally non-judgmental.
Spaniaposten did a good reporting job, I think, but the original article was longer and had a few other tidbits.
To begin with, I like the Spanish title and lead:
With an English Accent
Tourists and residents along the coast of Orihuela hardly know what Spanish is.
The article goes on to say that Orihuela Costa is a small piece of Europe, but more international than many European capitals. In addition to what was reported in Spaniaposten, the original focuses on the need for Spaniards to learn other languages--English at the least--in order to get any job dealing with the public and mentions that a media explosion of periodicals, websites, and radio in several languages is burgeoning. Finally--and one wonders why Spaniaposten does not mention it--several lines were devoted to describing free Spanish courses starting in mid-September in the town of Pilar de la Horadada, on a basic and intermediate level, to promote "faster integration."
Well, integration may be beyond the range of possibilities, but it's obvious that many municipalities are stretching themselves to offer language courses to expose foreigners to even a little Spanish. We don't live on Orihuela Costa, but we live within a half hour of it, and there are probably nearly as many foreigners in our inland area. I'm still waiting to hear from my town about when this fall's language classes will start, even though they are not free. It is true that one has to work to expose oneself to native Spanish-speakers in this part of Spain. A "peculiar situation,"indeed, as Información calls it.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Hot Enough to Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk?
The first time I heard someone say that it was "hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk," I'm sure was in my hometown in Ohio, and probably in the house we moved to when I was five years old. The expression immediately took root in my imagination. It did seem hot back in those summer days in the 1950s. I don't think anyone we knew had air conditioning in their house or their car then. We sure didn't. But that didn't matter anyway, because we didn't spend much time in the house or the car on those hot summer days when we were very young.
We played outside. Our house was in a new neighborhood without many shade trees, and without many kids, either. So I played with my sisters in the back yard or the driveway or the edge of the cornfield behind the house, or in the vacant lot two plots down the street. Sometimes we were joined by the girl across the street and sometimes by the boy from the big house down the street on the corner, neither of whom had any siblings near our ages.
I'll bet it was Brian who first told us one day that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. He was two or three years older than I was, so he would know expressions like that. Maybe he even knew how hot it had to be to fry an egg. He may have led us to believe that he had carried out this experiment already with some of his more grown-up friends. He was more daring than we ever were, because, after all, he was a boy and he was older. Still, I don't believe that he really had fried an egg on the sidewalk. I know he didn''t try it with us.
This week it was hot enough in Spain so that the plastic clothes pins I sometimes use to hang laundry on the line on my upstairs terrace were popping left and right from the heat. Snap, crackle and pop--no sooner did I pinch one open than a portion of it split off and fell onto the tile terrace. It happened not once, not twice, but several times. That's when I wondered whether it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, or at least on the terrace tiles.
I didn't spend a lot of time designing this experiment. I just went downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed an egg out of the refrigerator and the egg timer from the refrigerator door. I came back upstairs, cracked the egg and dropped it carefully on a terrace tile as far away from my clean laundry as I could get. I set the timer for five minutes and escaped back inside to my air-conditioned office.
When the egg timer went off five minutes later, I dashed out to see the egg. No difference. I set the timer again for five minutes. This time I noticed a couple bubbles in the egg white on one side of the egg. Five minutes later the bubbles were still there but had not changed. No change after the next 15 minutes, either.
I set the timer for 30 minutes and went downstairs to prepare lunch. When I checked on my egg just before taking the salads to the downstairs sun room, there were a few bubbles in the yolk of the egg. Back downstairs for a half-hour lunch in the sun room--where the temperature gauge outside said 100 degrees F. in the shade. My post-lunch egg check (this was after an hour and a half of "frying") revealed that the yellow had broken enough for three small spurts to bleed out of the yolk. It was really not appetizing. I was glad that I had already had lunch and that I had not eaten eggs.
Three hours later, after an afternoon petanca game and shopping, we took this photo to the right. Some of the white of the egg had dried up, leaving only a thin shiny film on the tile; the other side of the white did live up to its name. Except for the three spots of yolk that had escaped and turned red, the yolk still looked fresh and shiny.
I didn't clean up the mess from this experiment until the next morning, and that was a mistake, because by that time two ants were on their way into the feast. But I shooed them away and scooped up the egg with a wad of paper towel. Underneath the outer curvature of the yolk it was still a little bit runny, just the way some people like their fried or poached eggs. But they wouldn't have wanted this one.
We played outside. Our house was in a new neighborhood without many shade trees, and without many kids, either. So I played with my sisters in the back yard or the driveway or the edge of the cornfield behind the house, or in the vacant lot two plots down the street. Sometimes we were joined by the girl across the street and sometimes by the boy from the big house down the street on the corner, neither of whom had any siblings near our ages.
I'll bet it was Brian who first told us one day that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. He was two or three years older than I was, so he would know expressions like that. Maybe he even knew how hot it had to be to fry an egg. He may have led us to believe that he had carried out this experiment already with some of his more grown-up friends. He was more daring than we ever were, because, after all, he was a boy and he was older. Still, I don't believe that he really had fried an egg on the sidewalk. I know he didn''t try it with us.
This week it was hot enough in Spain so that the plastic clothes pins I sometimes use to hang laundry on the line on my upstairs terrace were popping left and right from the heat. Snap, crackle and pop--no sooner did I pinch one open than a portion of it split off and fell onto the tile terrace. It happened not once, not twice, but several times. That's when I wondered whether it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, or at least on the terrace tiles.
I didn't spend a lot of time designing this experiment. I just went downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed an egg out of the refrigerator and the egg timer from the refrigerator door. I came back upstairs, cracked the egg and dropped it carefully on a terrace tile as far away from my clean laundry as I could get. I set the timer for five minutes and escaped back inside to my air-conditioned office.
When the egg timer went off five minutes later, I dashed out to see the egg. No difference. I set the timer again for five minutes. This time I noticed a couple bubbles in the egg white on one side of the egg. Five minutes later the bubbles were still there but had not changed. No change after the next 15 minutes, either.
I set the timer for 30 minutes and went downstairs to prepare lunch. When I checked on my egg just before taking the salads to the downstairs sun room, there were a few bubbles in the yolk of the egg. Back downstairs for a half-hour lunch in the sun room--where the temperature gauge outside said 100 degrees F. in the shade. My post-lunch egg check (this was after an hour and a half of "frying") revealed that the yellow had broken enough for three small spurts to bleed out of the yolk. It was really not appetizing. I was glad that I had already had lunch and that I had not eaten eggs.
 | |
| Not quite hot enough to fry an egg on the terrace tile |
I didn't clean up the mess from this experiment until the next morning, and that was a mistake, because by that time two ants were on their way into the feast. But I shooed them away and scooped up the egg with a wad of paper towel. Underneath the outer curvature of the yolk it was still a little bit runny, just the way some people like their fried or poached eggs. But they wouldn't have wanted this one.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Requiem for a Palm
The beetle eats the trunk from the inside, but it takes months before outward signs of the disease appear. Yesterday our palm specialist encircled the trunk in his arms and shook it--and was able to move the trunk from side to side as much as if it were shaking in an earthquake. It was obvious it had to go.
We went out to do some shopping in the afternoon, planning to be back by the 6:00 hour that he had promised to return. When we drove into the street at 5:30, however, a huge truck and crane were in front of the house, and they were just lifting the tree off its shaky mooring, over the balustrade, and loading it, roots and all, into the disposal truck. The truck had a logo on it: Esperanza (hope).
We have been doing a lot of pruning and thinning out of the vegetation around our house since we bought it. It had been landscaped from bare nothing by a wonderful English gardener when first built 13 years ago. But that's one piece that we didn't want to thin out. There is a hole there now, and though the space is not large and can be replaced with something else, it can't be replaced with that particular type of palm, and I will miss it.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Another Spanish Holiday
Today is a national holiday in Spain. It is the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, celebrating Mary's bodily ascension into heaven upon her death.
It's hard to keep track of all the Spanish holidays, especially those of religious origin. Often they arrive before I am aware of them, and I am left at the door of a supermarket that is closed due to the holiday. Last month I noticed a sign on a store door saying the store had been closed due to the holiday (the day before) and I still don't know what the holiday was.
But this time I knew five days in advance there was going to be a holiday--there was a sign at the health club that it would be open only in the morning of August 15, "due to the bank holiday." No one at the club was able to tell me what the holiday was, but they did explain that, since they were in "the leisure business," they were permitted to be open--though only until 2:00 PM. I knew the post office and the banks would be closed, of course, and factories, and probably the large commercial establishments. Even our gardeners had told us once that they couldn't come on their normal day because it was a holiday and they would be fined severely if they worked that day. My big question is always whether the food stores will be open.
So as we drove out this morning to my Spanish class (a private class, in my teacher's home, and therefore not regulated) we kept our eyes peeled for signs of life on the streets and byways. There was a lot of traffic, and sure enough, there were cars in the parking lot at Lidl, and at Consum, and then we saw them even at Mercadona, notorious for always being closed on holidays. After my class we made it to the fitness center for a workout session before their closing time at 2:00. Back home for lunch and then I was content to lock myself in my air-conditioned office for several hours of work--no day off for me.
So I never saw many signs of a holiday. Sure, there had been the usual fireworks on Saturday and Sunday evenings, but that's a common occurrence, especially in the summer, and not limited to weekends. And I remember now that Sunday and Monday were the two performance days for the city of Elche's annual Mystery plays, dating back to medieval times, which I hope I will see some year. If I had driven out after 2:00 I probably would have noticed that commercial life had closed up shop, though I suspect that many more people passed the remaining hours of the holiday at the beach than at church.
So it seems quite fitting to have spent some time today reading an article from the newspaper, in preparation for my next Spanish lesson, about the upcoming visit of the Pope to Madrid this week. Given the volume of demonstrations in the world, I hope it goes without too much open controversy. The gauntlet has already been thrown, however. On a previous visit to Spain last November, the Pope chastised Spain for its "anti-clericalism and a strong and aggressive secularism like that which was seen in the 1930s" [in the years immediately prior to the Spanish Civil War and the Franco era]. Indeed, the only question seems to be whether the Pope will continue his condemnations in his six scheduled open speeches or in smaller groups with journalists, as he carried it out in November.
We will know in a couple more days, but in the meantime, we can only speculate, and read of how the papal visit will deprive hundreds of workers their traditional August vacation, cost many euros, create traffic havoc, and has already seen the erection of more than a hundred portable confessionals.
It's hard to keep track of all the Spanish holidays, especially those of religious origin. Often they arrive before I am aware of them, and I am left at the door of a supermarket that is closed due to the holiday. Last month I noticed a sign on a store door saying the store had been closed due to the holiday (the day before) and I still don't know what the holiday was.
But this time I knew five days in advance there was going to be a holiday--there was a sign at the health club that it would be open only in the morning of August 15, "due to the bank holiday." No one at the club was able to tell me what the holiday was, but they did explain that, since they were in "the leisure business," they were permitted to be open--though only until 2:00 PM. I knew the post office and the banks would be closed, of course, and factories, and probably the large commercial establishments. Even our gardeners had told us once that they couldn't come on their normal day because it was a holiday and they would be fined severely if they worked that day. My big question is always whether the food stores will be open.
So as we drove out this morning to my Spanish class (a private class, in my teacher's home, and therefore not regulated) we kept our eyes peeled for signs of life on the streets and byways. There was a lot of traffic, and sure enough, there were cars in the parking lot at Lidl, and at Consum, and then we saw them even at Mercadona, notorious for always being closed on holidays. After my class we made it to the fitness center for a workout session before their closing time at 2:00. Back home for lunch and then I was content to lock myself in my air-conditioned office for several hours of work--no day off for me.
So I never saw many signs of a holiday. Sure, there had been the usual fireworks on Saturday and Sunday evenings, but that's a common occurrence, especially in the summer, and not limited to weekends. And I remember now that Sunday and Monday were the two performance days for the city of Elche's annual Mystery plays, dating back to medieval times, which I hope I will see some year. If I had driven out after 2:00 I probably would have noticed that commercial life had closed up shop, though I suspect that many more people passed the remaining hours of the holiday at the beach than at church.
So it seems quite fitting to have spent some time today reading an article from the newspaper, in preparation for my next Spanish lesson, about the upcoming visit of the Pope to Madrid this week. Given the volume of demonstrations in the world, I hope it goes without too much open controversy. The gauntlet has already been thrown, however. On a previous visit to Spain last November, the Pope chastised Spain for its "anti-clericalism and a strong and aggressive secularism like that which was seen in the 1930s" [in the years immediately prior to the Spanish Civil War and the Franco era]. Indeed, the only question seems to be whether the Pope will continue his condemnations in his six scheduled open speeches or in smaller groups with journalists, as he carried it out in November.
We will know in a couple more days, but in the meantime, we can only speculate, and read of how the papal visit will deprive hundreds of workers their traditional August vacation, cost many euros, create traffic havoc, and has already seen the erection of more than a hundred portable confessionals.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
¡Gazpacho!
It's gazpacho time. As much as I hate Google constantly shoving Spanish ads at me on the Internet, and even though I was deeply involved in some real work when it happened the other day, I was glad when it served up several helpings of YouTube videos on making gazpacho. I got distracted long enough so I can't even remember what I am supposed to get back to.
Not that I went immediately to the kitchen to make gazpacho. I had already taken care of that, the easy way. The local Consum supermarket had a special on ready-made gazpacho when I was there earlier in the week. They had "traditional" and "suave," or soft. I picked up a liter of traditional and was keeping it in my refrigerator for a day when I had to make lunch in a hurry.
That came on Wednesday, after we went to the medical center in the morning and had to leave the house early in the afternoon for the cleaners to take over. It often takes me a half hour or more to make our usual lunchtime vegetable and fruit salads, but this day I did it in record time. In the space of ten minutes, I diced a yellow and a red pepper, a cucumber, and a red onion, retrieved the gazpacho from the refrigerator, and poured the seasoned tomato-pepper liquid into two bowls. Luncheon was served.
Janet Mendel, the American-living-in-Spain cookbook author who I have mentioned before in connection with tortilla, calls gazpacho "Andalusian Liquid Salad." She includes several recipes in her book Cooking in Spain, and doubtless more in her subsequent books, but I think this recipe sums up the spirit of gazpacho best:
Not that I went immediately to the kitchen to make gazpacho. I had already taken care of that, the easy way. The local Consum supermarket had a special on ready-made gazpacho when I was there earlier in the week. They had "traditional" and "suave," or soft. I picked up a liter of traditional and was keeping it in my refrigerator for a day when I had to make lunch in a hurry.
That came on Wednesday, after we went to the medical center in the morning and had to leave the house early in the afternoon for the cleaners to take over. It often takes me a half hour or more to make our usual lunchtime vegetable and fruit salads, but this day I did it in record time. In the space of ten minutes, I diced a yellow and a red pepper, a cucumber, and a red onion, retrieved the gazpacho from the refrigerator, and poured the seasoned tomato-pepper liquid into two bowls. Luncheon was served.
Janet Mendel, the American-living-in-Spain cookbook author who I have mentioned before in connection with tortilla, calls gazpacho "Andalusian Liquid Salad." She includes several recipes in her book Cooking in Spain, and doubtless more in her subsequent books, but I think this recipe sums up the spirit of gazpacho best:
"Take a hot August afternoon at a little finca deep in the countryside. Pick the reddest, ripest tomatoes, sweet-smelling off the vine, a few green peppers, a cucumber, and dip them all in the cool water of a spring to rinse off the sun's heat. In the deep shade of a carob tree, start mashing all these ingredients in a big wooden bowl, adding a bit of garlic and onion stored under the straw in the shed. Pick a lemon from a nearby tree and add its tang to the gazpacho. Oil, bread and salt--brought from home in a cloth bag--complete the gazpacho. From the earthenware jug add cold water. Serve immediately and follow with a siesta!"
Janet Mendel, Cooking in Spain, 1996, c1987
"Does she work outside the house?"
A perfectly normal question about women in the developed world these days, especially those in a partnership (frequently known as marriage) and especially when the couple is raising children. Many people have made the decision to form their world in ways so that two incomes are not needed, at least not during the time when children are young. But often, when the kids reach school age, the issue is reconsidered, for financial or personal reasons, and "she," or rarely "he," returns to paid work outside the house.
Not in Spain, I think, or at least not easily. There is the not-so-slight problem of the Spanish daily schedule. That long siesta period in the middle of the day affects more than the poor Madrid businessman who must partake of a leisurely if lonely midday meal at a restaurant close to work, because the traffic and distances are too great to drive home for dinner and return to work. The midday meal and siesta also define the school day, separating it into two sections: morning and "afternoon." And that daily schedule shapes the work day for the ama de casa, or housewife, or stay-at-home mom.
Granted, I don't know a lot of Spanish families with children, but I know what I see outside my window. The school bus drives by at 8:30 each morning on its way to the single pick-up point in our urbanization. We live in a safe area, but I notice that the mother down the street still walks her elementary-school aged boy to the bus stop on the other side of the development.
At 1:15, sometimes while we are having an early lunch in the front sunroom, the school bus races around the periphery street again, bringing the kids back to the neighborhood drop-off point for comida at home, the main meal of the day
At 3:15 we hear the school bus again, coming to pick the children up to take them back to school for their second session of the day. I've often said that, if I were working this schedule, I would find it almost impossible to get up and make myself ready for work twice in one day--once is enough! I would find it even harder to get someone else up and ready for work twice a day.
We don't usually hear the school bus on its fourth trip of the day, but I do know the kids get returned home. I suppose the timing depends somewhat on their age and extra-curricular activities and the season, but I know that the "afternoon" can extend until 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
So when exactly does a mother have time for working outside the house, especially if she is the one responsible for preparing that main meal of the day at "midday" (and we won't even discuss the evening meal at 9:00 PM or so)?
There are women who work outside, of course--I see them in the shops and grocery stores, and the banks, the public offices, and health facilities--and certainly many appear to be mothers of school-aged children. Many families have help in the form of grandparents, or sisters, or cousins, but the ones I know have immigrated to Spain and have left at least part of this extended family behind. It cannot be easy to even think about working outside the house when daily life is punctuated so frequently with family life.
Not in Spain, I think, or at least not easily. There is the not-so-slight problem of the Spanish daily schedule. That long siesta period in the middle of the day affects more than the poor Madrid businessman who must partake of a leisurely if lonely midday meal at a restaurant close to work, because the traffic and distances are too great to drive home for dinner and return to work. The midday meal and siesta also define the school day, separating it into two sections: morning and "afternoon." And that daily schedule shapes the work day for the ama de casa, or housewife, or stay-at-home mom.
Granted, I don't know a lot of Spanish families with children, but I know what I see outside my window. The school bus drives by at 8:30 each morning on its way to the single pick-up point in our urbanization. We live in a safe area, but I notice that the mother down the street still walks her elementary-school aged boy to the bus stop on the other side of the development.
At 1:15, sometimes while we are having an early lunch in the front sunroom, the school bus races around the periphery street again, bringing the kids back to the neighborhood drop-off point for comida at home, the main meal of the day
At 3:15 we hear the school bus again, coming to pick the children up to take them back to school for their second session of the day. I've often said that, if I were working this schedule, I would find it almost impossible to get up and make myself ready for work twice in one day--once is enough! I would find it even harder to get someone else up and ready for work twice a day.
We don't usually hear the school bus on its fourth trip of the day, but I do know the kids get returned home. I suppose the timing depends somewhat on their age and extra-curricular activities and the season, but I know that the "afternoon" can extend until 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
So when exactly does a mother have time for working outside the house, especially if she is the one responsible for preparing that main meal of the day at "midday" (and we won't even discuss the evening meal at 9:00 PM or so)?
There are women who work outside, of course--I see them in the shops and grocery stores, and the banks, the public offices, and health facilities--and certainly many appear to be mothers of school-aged children. Many families have help in the form of grandparents, or sisters, or cousins, but the ones I know have immigrated to Spain and have left at least part of this extended family behind. It cannot be easy to even think about working outside the house when daily life is punctuated so frequently with family life.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Como en Casa
I've been back in Spain for almost two weeks now, and I am coming to feel very much at home. Me siento como en casa. The jet lag is finally gone and I am sleeping through the night without a sleeping pill. Good sleep is always hard to come by after the transatlantic journey, and especially in summer, when the weather is hot and we alternate between the bedroom air conditioner, which eventually becomes too cold no matter how many degrees we set it for, and the overhead fan, which eventually allows the temperature to creep up to where we need the a/c again. And isn't it a pleasure to be back in the land of good and silent room air conditioners, instead of those noisy things that are still grinding away in too many hotels in the U.S.
This week has been a succession of small rituals that make up our pleasant everyday life in Spain. Tuesday and Friday we had petanca games with the Danes. We were only three players on Tuesday, and I lost both games, but it was still a bit of exercise in the sun, and I enjoyed it. Friday there were 20 people at least, way fewer than normal because many go back to Denmark to visit in the summer, but some Danes also come to Spain to visit, and I played against two visitors--and my team won both games.
Wednesday we went to Almoradí to the health clinic, in the first of several health visits that we hope will find a solution to Johannes' difficulties in walking. Health care could be a near full-time occupation in Spain, or maybe it's only because of our age? We had been to the regular doctor the week before--I hesitate to call him the primary care physician because the only care I've ever seen him provide is to enter data into a computer and dispense appointment papers and prescriptions. Next week's appointment will be the clinic that does blood tests, and then the week after that all the data will be assembled back at the regular doctor's. This is the way the system works when it's not an emergency, and that's all right, because after each appointment we enjoy a cup of café con leche with a media tostada at a local bar. Then I am reminded again of how civilized the coffee ritual is here, where you never see a paper cup unless you go to McDonald's--and you wouldn't do that normally because there you can't see a tostada.
One activity that I am not back to is my weekly Spanish lesson, because my teacher has houseguests and will until the middle of August. That's typical here--we break for visitors, who arrive frequently from the north, or when we ourselves travel, of course. So in spite of the fact that I have a private class and my lessons don't have to follow the usual Spanish pattern of pausing for the summer from June until September, they will, this year at least. There is a reason these patterns develop.
Thursday evening we visited the home of a Spanish-American couple we have come to know, and enjoyed dinner and conversation with them on their beautiful terrace overlooking the pool and the lights in Torrevieja on the other side of the salt lake. By this time of day there were cool breezes and no flies or mosquitoes. We chatted over a drink and hors d'oeuvres from 7:30 until twilight fell, and then sat down to a simple dinner of pork roasted with vegetables, and grilled zucchini and tomatoes. Spanish recipes, my friend assured me, and we were definitely eating at Spanish time, which the two of us cannot normally manage. Suddenly we noticed that the clock stood at almost midnight, and we had no idea of how it had gotten that late.
Yesterday we skipped our usual Sunday Zoco market--the one close enough to us that we could walk to it but never do because we don't know how much we might buy and have to carry home--and went instead to the "lemon market," which involves a drive down Lemon Tree Road toward the town of Guardamar. It is much larger and some say "more Spanish" than the Zoco. Maybe so, and we certainly noticed that the prices of produce were far cheaper than at the Zoco. But that may be because we are in the midst of the plenitude of summer, and they were almost giving away tomatoes and plums, and even the grapes were less costly than usual. I was amused by a man demonstrating a wonderful fruit and vegetable slicer with three different blades--and could understand the "as seen on TV" promotion in Spanish even though I didn't catch every single word. The utensil would have been perfect for our lunchtime salads and would not even have taken up very much storage space, but the price, which of course only comes out at the end, after tons of vegetable slices and curls have piled up in front of him, was "only" 25 euros.
After such a demonstration we just needed to sit down for a cup of café con leche, but we weren't able to find a place for a tostada at this "more Spanish" market. Instead we settled at one of the many "English breakfast" establishments, where we indulged in English bacon, sausage, an egg, toast, tomato, and an enormous cup of tea. Coffee would have been extra, so why not do as the "natives" do?
And that is multicultural Spain as I know it.
This week has been a succession of small rituals that make up our pleasant everyday life in Spain. Tuesday and Friday we had petanca games with the Danes. We were only three players on Tuesday, and I lost both games, but it was still a bit of exercise in the sun, and I enjoyed it. Friday there were 20 people at least, way fewer than normal because many go back to Denmark to visit in the summer, but some Danes also come to Spain to visit, and I played against two visitors--and my team won both games.
Wednesday we went to Almoradí to the health clinic, in the first of several health visits that we hope will find a solution to Johannes' difficulties in walking. Health care could be a near full-time occupation in Spain, or maybe it's only because of our age? We had been to the regular doctor the week before--I hesitate to call him the primary care physician because the only care I've ever seen him provide is to enter data into a computer and dispense appointment papers and prescriptions. Next week's appointment will be the clinic that does blood tests, and then the week after that all the data will be assembled back at the regular doctor's. This is the way the system works when it's not an emergency, and that's all right, because after each appointment we enjoy a cup of café con leche with a media tostada at a local bar. Then I am reminded again of how civilized the coffee ritual is here, where you never see a paper cup unless you go to McDonald's--and you wouldn't do that normally because there you can't see a tostada.
One activity that I am not back to is my weekly Spanish lesson, because my teacher has houseguests and will until the middle of August. That's typical here--we break for visitors, who arrive frequently from the north, or when we ourselves travel, of course. So in spite of the fact that I have a private class and my lessons don't have to follow the usual Spanish pattern of pausing for the summer from June until September, they will, this year at least. There is a reason these patterns develop.
Thursday evening we visited the home of a Spanish-American couple we have come to know, and enjoyed dinner and conversation with them on their beautiful terrace overlooking the pool and the lights in Torrevieja on the other side of the salt lake. By this time of day there were cool breezes and no flies or mosquitoes. We chatted over a drink and hors d'oeuvres from 7:30 until twilight fell, and then sat down to a simple dinner of pork roasted with vegetables, and grilled zucchini and tomatoes. Spanish recipes, my friend assured me, and we were definitely eating at Spanish time, which the two of us cannot normally manage. Suddenly we noticed that the clock stood at almost midnight, and we had no idea of how it had gotten that late.
Yesterday we skipped our usual Sunday Zoco market--the one close enough to us that we could walk to it but never do because we don't know how much we might buy and have to carry home--and went instead to the "lemon market," which involves a drive down Lemon Tree Road toward the town of Guardamar. It is much larger and some say "more Spanish" than the Zoco. Maybe so, and we certainly noticed that the prices of produce were far cheaper than at the Zoco. But that may be because we are in the midst of the plenitude of summer, and they were almost giving away tomatoes and plums, and even the grapes were less costly than usual. I was amused by a man demonstrating a wonderful fruit and vegetable slicer with three different blades--and could understand the "as seen on TV" promotion in Spanish even though I didn't catch every single word. The utensil would have been perfect for our lunchtime salads and would not even have taken up very much storage space, but the price, which of course only comes out at the end, after tons of vegetable slices and curls have piled up in front of him, was "only" 25 euros.
After such a demonstration we just needed to sit down for a cup of café con leche, but we weren't able to find a place for a tostada at this "more Spanish" market. Instead we settled at one of the many "English breakfast" establishments, where we indulged in English bacon, sausage, an egg, toast, tomato, and an enormous cup of tea. Coffee would have been extra, so why not do as the "natives" do?
And that is multicultural Spain as I know it.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday in Spanish New Orleans
This is the first Sunday I've spent in Spain in over a month; I've been back in the U.S. for one of my twice-yearly visits, this one anchored by the annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) in New Orleans. As usual, the ALA convention was busy and productive, and as usual, New Orleans was fun and interesting. It was my second visit to New Orleans since I have been living in Spain, and I remembered previously stumbling onto the Spanish Plaza there, a beautiful gathering place with a typical Spanish fountain, surrounded by gorgeous tiles depicting the official seals of each of Spain's autonomous regions. The plaza was dedicated by Spain to the city of New Orleans in 1976 in recognition of their shared past and with a pledge of fraternity in the future.
This time as I wandered in the French Quarter (well, as I headed out for beignets and shopping in Jackson Square) I took more note of the ceramic tiles on many streets announcing that "When New Orleans was the Capital of the Spanish Province of Luisiana 1762-1803 This street bore the name" ... Calle Real, for example. I knew that New Orleans had been first French, then Spanish, and then French again before it came into the United States as a part of the Louisiana Purchase. What I didn't realize was just how short a period of time the second French period had been.
Thanks to a lovely reception sponsored by Oxford University Press in The Cabildo, a key site of the Louisiana State Museum, I had the opportunity to spend a Sunday evening perusing historical artifacts in various museum rooms. The Cabildo served as the town hall and its Sala Capitular was the site for the formalization of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. I was struck by historical descriptions that said that in this room the colony was transferred from Spain to France on November 30, 1803 and then from France to the United States on December 20, 1803. Just twenty days later!
Why the hurry? Did Spain know that France was going to turn around and re-sell the territory immediately, and to the U.S.? Did France know at the time of purchase that it would divest itself of this land so soon? What had happened to cause this dual transfer? And where was I back in my U.S. history classes many years ago to miss out on what sounds now like a scandal or a coup?
Explanations within the Cabildo were nonexistent, but now I've had the time to do some research, and Wikipedia and the Cabildo websites offer more explanation. It seems that the November 1803 transfer was just a formality and that the territory had really been in French hands, though secretly, since the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso three years earlier. It's a tale of intrigue, power, and negotiation, with Napoleon, a kingship in the Italian peninsula, the fall of Haiti, and the creation of a counter-power to England.
To find out more, read Wikipedia on the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. Yale Law School's Avalon Project has Hunter Miller's Notes on the Louisiana Purchase, together with English translations of the original documents
This time as I wandered in the French Quarter (well, as I headed out for beignets and shopping in Jackson Square) I took more note of the ceramic tiles on many streets announcing that "When New Orleans was the Capital of the Spanish Province of Luisiana 1762-1803 This street bore the name" ... Calle Real, for example. I knew that New Orleans had been first French, then Spanish, and then French again before it came into the United States as a part of the Louisiana Purchase. What I didn't realize was just how short a period of time the second French period had been.
Thanks to a lovely reception sponsored by Oxford University Press in The Cabildo, a key site of the Louisiana State Museum, I had the opportunity to spend a Sunday evening perusing historical artifacts in various museum rooms. The Cabildo served as the town hall and its Sala Capitular was the site for the formalization of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. I was struck by historical descriptions that said that in this room the colony was transferred from Spain to France on November 30, 1803 and then from France to the United States on December 20, 1803. Just twenty days later!
Why the hurry? Did Spain know that France was going to turn around and re-sell the territory immediately, and to the U.S.? Did France know at the time of purchase that it would divest itself of this land so soon? What had happened to cause this dual transfer? And where was I back in my U.S. history classes many years ago to miss out on what sounds now like a scandal or a coup?
Explanations within the Cabildo were nonexistent, but now I've had the time to do some research, and Wikipedia and the Cabildo websites offer more explanation. It seems that the November 1803 transfer was just a formality and that the territory had really been in French hands, though secretly, since the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso three years earlier. It's a tale of intrigue, power, and negotiation, with Napoleon, a kingship in the Italian peninsula, the fall of Haiti, and the creation of a counter-power to England.
To find out more, read Wikipedia on the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. Yale Law School's Avalon Project has Hunter Miller's Notes on the Louisiana Purchase, together with English translations of the original documents
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Helping Lorca, and Lessons in Philanthropy
The two earthquakes that hit Lorca on May 11 have passed from the headlines, but we still think about what is happening in this city and how it is rebuilding itself. We were reminded of Lorca in a very clever way this past week when we did our customary monthly banking. So far Spain seems to have escaped the frenetic bank mergers that the U.S. and other countries have experienced over the past decade, and for reasons that I will not detail, we have accounts in three or four different banks. It is not at all difficult to pass six or seven or even more banks while walking a single block in the commercial areas close to us.
So last Monday, according to our monthly ritual, we went first to the bank up the hill to pull money out of "his"account, and then we stopped at one half-way down the hill to press the buttons and collect a little more cash from "her" cajero. Then we proceeded quickly to the bank that assisted us with our house purchase and where we maintain a joint account for regular monthly expenses. Spain is still a cash economy in some ways, so we placed our accumulated euros and the bank book on the counter and waited while the teller performed the usual paperwork. Part of that paperwork involves bringing the bank book up to date with the previous month's automatic deductions, which is done by sliding the open book all the way into a machine; the machine pulls the figures and notations from its wide-ranging memory and puts it all down in neat rows in the book, even automatically turning the page of the book inside the machine when necessary.
It was while we were waiting that we noticed the strategically placed poster, asking us to donate money to the Cruz Roja, Spain's Red Cross, for the recuperation of Lorca. This was not a small round container with a slit on the top in which we could slip a few coins--it was a paper form with the bank account number to which we could easily--now that we were in the bank and knew exactly how much money we had--make a transfer from our account to theirs. It took no time at all for us to decide to give and for the bank teller to process that paperwork, and we gave much nore than we would have if someone had come to the door.
Now we have read in several sources that Lorca is taking another step toward its own recovery. Its office of tourism has opened a "tourist route" in town for visitors to see its historical spots from many centuries, many of which suffered severe damage, and also to see the progress toward restoration. Lorca's second annual Medieval Market took place as usual the second week of June, and a previously scheduled professional trade show for rural tourism will still use its planned Lorca venue this coming week. So a little later this summer, after I am finished with travels farther afield, I intend to visit Lorca and follow the tourist trail to see its historical sites, but even more to see the effects of the earthquakes and what is being done to recover. As the head of the tourist office says, it is a unique opportunity to see how the forces of nature can touch the lives of the people and the history of a city, and to continue helping by coming to visit, spending money, and securing jobs.
So last Monday, according to our monthly ritual, we went first to the bank up the hill to pull money out of "his"account, and then we stopped at one half-way down the hill to press the buttons and collect a little more cash from "her" cajero. Then we proceeded quickly to the bank that assisted us with our house purchase and where we maintain a joint account for regular monthly expenses. Spain is still a cash economy in some ways, so we placed our accumulated euros and the bank book on the counter and waited while the teller performed the usual paperwork. Part of that paperwork involves bringing the bank book up to date with the previous month's automatic deductions, which is done by sliding the open book all the way into a machine; the machine pulls the figures and notations from its wide-ranging memory and puts it all down in neat rows in the book, even automatically turning the page of the book inside the machine when necessary.
It was while we were waiting that we noticed the strategically placed poster, asking us to donate money to the Cruz Roja, Spain's Red Cross, for the recuperation of Lorca. This was not a small round container with a slit on the top in which we could slip a few coins--it was a paper form with the bank account number to which we could easily--now that we were in the bank and knew exactly how much money we had--make a transfer from our account to theirs. It took no time at all for us to decide to give and for the bank teller to process that paperwork, and we gave much nore than we would have if someone had come to the door.
Now we have read in several sources that Lorca is taking another step toward its own recovery. Its office of tourism has opened a "tourist route" in town for visitors to see its historical spots from many centuries, many of which suffered severe damage, and also to see the progress toward restoration. Lorca's second annual Medieval Market took place as usual the second week of June, and a previously scheduled professional trade show for rural tourism will still use its planned Lorca venue this coming week. So a little later this summer, after I am finished with travels farther afield, I intend to visit Lorca and follow the tourist trail to see its historical sites, but even more to see the effects of the earthquakes and what is being done to recover. As the head of the tourist office says, it is a unique opportunity to see how the forces of nature can touch the lives of the people and the history of a city, and to continue helping by coming to visit, spending money, and securing jobs.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Less Than 36 Hours in Madrid
A certain major U.S. newspaper is known for its travel stories with advice for passing a quick but action-packed weekend in world cities. Sad to say, my trips to Madrid are usually less than the 36 hours in length described by the New York Times in this series. I have been to Spain's capital probably ten times since moving to the country, but with one exception--a four-night meeting and reunion with three of Johannes' Danish engineering college classmates and their wives in 2009--all my trips to Madrid have been connected in one way or another with an airport. There have been few opportunities for sight-seeing.
In the early days, when I traveled twice a year back to the U.S., it was not possible to make the trip without spending a night in Madrid or in London. That's why I found myself one January 5 in the center of Madrid on the last shopping night before Three Kings' Day, when Spanish children get their Christmas presents. The main department store, El Corte Ingles, was open until midnight, and we watched the parade and fireworks on TV after we made our way through the crowded streets to our center-city hotel. The midnight shopping trip and parade were the memorable events from that Madrid trip.
Since then. most Madrid airport trips have been to fetch visitors from the airport or take them back for their trips across the Atlantic. Since transatlantic flights almost invariably land here in the early hours of the morning, we usually book a hotel room close to Barajas airport so we can be at the door letting passengers out from the baggage area at 6:00 or so in the morning. My longest airport trip occurred when we made the six-hour drive from Roquetas to Madrid to pick up my mother one winter day and were awakened from our fitful sleep a few hours before her scheduled arrival with the news that her flight had been cancelled due to bad weather, she was somewhere around Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and she would "probably" arrive on the next day's early morning flight. That flight delay gave us an unexpected 24 hours in Madrid, and I saw the Prado.
Last year I took the train from Alicante to Madrid to spend an overnight with an American friend who had a 24-hour layover on her way from Morocco to Washington, DC. Together we had a very enjoyable respite and saw several attractions, though not those recommended by the 36 Hours article.
But over the years, most Madrid airport trips have not leant themselves to exploring Madrid or even the environs of Barajas, the suburb that is home to its four airport terminals. We generally drive instead of taking the train, because who wants to lose money on return train tickets if the plane one is meeting is delayed? We start out the day before, find our way through the exasperating Madrid traffic, check into a hotel, and try to find something to eat nearby at a shopping center, because real restaurants are not open for dinner early enough for us to get enough sleep before we need to be up at 4:30 or 5:00 AM.
When we picked up our latest visitor last month, our trip was improved, even though we still did not do any sight-seeing. Gloria Pèrez Sànchez, the lady who lives inside the GPS, got us to our new hotel in record time, with no wrong turns and no frustration. A large shopping center was a short walk away, and we found what we wanted to eat and browsed a bit before returning to an early night in the sack. Breakfast was, of course, not available next morning prior to our 6:00 AM free shuttle ride to the airport, and Spanish hotels do not have coffee service in the rooms. But there was a coffee machine in the lobby! The plane came in on time, and our passenger and her luggage were on it. We took the free transportation back to the airport, rested, and were soon on our way for the four-hour drive home.
Taking this guest back for her midnight flight to Buenos Aires last Thursday, we booked the same hotel so that we could climb into bed after she was swallowed up by the security gates at 10:00 PM, and we took the train from Alicante to Madrid to provide a little variation in scenery. It is relatively easy to use the metro in Madrid to go from Atocha station, where the train comes in, to the Barajas terminals, though it does take two transfers and it was a good thing that we had three people to manage the six pieces of luggage (only one of which would be returning to Alicante). Our plan was to go to the airport by metro and take the hotel transportation back to the hotel, where we would find something to eat at that convenient shopping center, and then return to the airport for the flight check-in. Unfortunately when we walked into the terminal at 5:00 PM, we learned that there was a 95% chance that the midnight flight would be cancelled: the ash cloud from the Puyehue Chilean volcano was settling over Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires.
Yes, we had read the reports and had monitored the situation as best we could, and when we had left our house at 10:00 AM, there was no reason to expect that the flight would not go off. But something had happened during Thursday our time, and now there was nothing to do but hope. We were tired and did not want to wait for the hotel shuttle. So we piled into a taxi and headed for the hotel. A longer-than-expected ride later, we pulled up in front of the AC Feria, which was not the hotel that we asked for: the Axor Feria. An understandable error, but the driver was not happy. Nor were we. The driver muttered, and I heard Spanish words that I had only read in books, and not very good books at that.
We did get to the Axor and explained that we may turn out to be three people instead of the intended two in the reservation. They were most accommodating. We used the free wireless connection to get as much information as we could, and to send messages to those waiting in Argentina. We walked to the shopping center. We had dinner. We walked back to the hotel, collected the luggage, and went to the airport. The flight was indeed cancelled. Although the European Union has established strict rules about compensation and emergency arrangements for travelers when flights are cancelled, those rules do not apply in cases of unforeseen and uncontrollable meteorological problems, or "acts of God," as I translate the clause on which Air Europa was basing its actions.
We received a tentative reservation for Monday evening, four days hence, with a phone number to call on Sunday to confirm that the flight would go through--if it did not leave as scheduled after that confirmation, the cancellation arrangements would be enforced, and a hotel would be supplied. We returned to our hotel and phoned Renfe to add another ticket to the two return fares for Friday noon. No way, Jose. While the Thursday afternoon train to Madrid had been half empty, there were virtually no places available on the train from Madrid to the coast on a summer Friday afternoon. So we were up before dawn--at 5:30, I believe--to get a cab to the Renfe station, and by 7:00 we had gotten a credit on our two afternoon tickets and bought three for the morning train, which left at 7:20.
By noontime--26 hours after leaving the day before--we had retrieved our car at the Alicante train station and were back home in our Montebello house, adjusting to the four-day vacation extension and hoping for strong winds in the southern hemisphere to move the volcanic ash out of Buenos Aires.
We have just made the phone call and been told that the Monday midnight departure is scheduled sin problemas. We have reserved our now favorite hotel for Monday night, for two persons. We are driving instead of taking the train, trusting Gloria to get us to the hotel, and the hotel to get us to the airport. And we are hoping for an uneventful trip and less than 36 hours in Madrid.
In the early days, when I traveled twice a year back to the U.S., it was not possible to make the trip without spending a night in Madrid or in London. That's why I found myself one January 5 in the center of Madrid on the last shopping night before Three Kings' Day, when Spanish children get their Christmas presents. The main department store, El Corte Ingles, was open until midnight, and we watched the parade and fireworks on TV after we made our way through the crowded streets to our center-city hotel. The midnight shopping trip and parade were the memorable events from that Madrid trip.
Since then. most Madrid airport trips have been to fetch visitors from the airport or take them back for their trips across the Atlantic. Since transatlantic flights almost invariably land here in the early hours of the morning, we usually book a hotel room close to Barajas airport so we can be at the door letting passengers out from the baggage area at 6:00 or so in the morning. My longest airport trip occurred when we made the six-hour drive from Roquetas to Madrid to pick up my mother one winter day and were awakened from our fitful sleep a few hours before her scheduled arrival with the news that her flight had been cancelled due to bad weather, she was somewhere around Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and she would "probably" arrive on the next day's early morning flight. That flight delay gave us an unexpected 24 hours in Madrid, and I saw the Prado.
Last year I took the train from Alicante to Madrid to spend an overnight with an American friend who had a 24-hour layover on her way from Morocco to Washington, DC. Together we had a very enjoyable respite and saw several attractions, though not those recommended by the 36 Hours article.
But over the years, most Madrid airport trips have not leant themselves to exploring Madrid or even the environs of Barajas, the suburb that is home to its four airport terminals. We generally drive instead of taking the train, because who wants to lose money on return train tickets if the plane one is meeting is delayed? We start out the day before, find our way through the exasperating Madrid traffic, check into a hotel, and try to find something to eat nearby at a shopping center, because real restaurants are not open for dinner early enough for us to get enough sleep before we need to be up at 4:30 or 5:00 AM.
When we picked up our latest visitor last month, our trip was improved, even though we still did not do any sight-seeing. Gloria Pèrez Sànchez, the lady who lives inside the GPS, got us to our new hotel in record time, with no wrong turns and no frustration. A large shopping center was a short walk away, and we found what we wanted to eat and browsed a bit before returning to an early night in the sack. Breakfast was, of course, not available next morning prior to our 6:00 AM free shuttle ride to the airport, and Spanish hotels do not have coffee service in the rooms. But there was a coffee machine in the lobby! The plane came in on time, and our passenger and her luggage were on it. We took the free transportation back to the airport, rested, and were soon on our way for the four-hour drive home.
Taking this guest back for her midnight flight to Buenos Aires last Thursday, we booked the same hotel so that we could climb into bed after she was swallowed up by the security gates at 10:00 PM, and we took the train from Alicante to Madrid to provide a little variation in scenery. It is relatively easy to use the metro in Madrid to go from Atocha station, where the train comes in, to the Barajas terminals, though it does take two transfers and it was a good thing that we had three people to manage the six pieces of luggage (only one of which would be returning to Alicante). Our plan was to go to the airport by metro and take the hotel transportation back to the hotel, where we would find something to eat at that convenient shopping center, and then return to the airport for the flight check-in. Unfortunately when we walked into the terminal at 5:00 PM, we learned that there was a 95% chance that the midnight flight would be cancelled: the ash cloud from the Puyehue Chilean volcano was settling over Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires.
Yes, we had read the reports and had monitored the situation as best we could, and when we had left our house at 10:00 AM, there was no reason to expect that the flight would not go off. But something had happened during Thursday our time, and now there was nothing to do but hope. We were tired and did not want to wait for the hotel shuttle. So we piled into a taxi and headed for the hotel. A longer-than-expected ride later, we pulled up in front of the AC Feria, which was not the hotel that we asked for: the Axor Feria. An understandable error, but the driver was not happy. Nor were we. The driver muttered, and I heard Spanish words that I had only read in books, and not very good books at that.
We did get to the Axor and explained that we may turn out to be three people instead of the intended two in the reservation. They were most accommodating. We used the free wireless connection to get as much information as we could, and to send messages to those waiting in Argentina. We walked to the shopping center. We had dinner. We walked back to the hotel, collected the luggage, and went to the airport. The flight was indeed cancelled. Although the European Union has established strict rules about compensation and emergency arrangements for travelers when flights are cancelled, those rules do not apply in cases of unforeseen and uncontrollable meteorological problems, or "acts of God," as I translate the clause on which Air Europa was basing its actions.
We received a tentative reservation for Monday evening, four days hence, with a phone number to call on Sunday to confirm that the flight would go through--if it did not leave as scheduled after that confirmation, the cancellation arrangements would be enforced, and a hotel would be supplied. We returned to our hotel and phoned Renfe to add another ticket to the two return fares for Friday noon. No way, Jose. While the Thursday afternoon train to Madrid had been half empty, there were virtually no places available on the train from Madrid to the coast on a summer Friday afternoon. So we were up before dawn--at 5:30, I believe--to get a cab to the Renfe station, and by 7:00 we had gotten a credit on our two afternoon tickets and bought three for the morning train, which left at 7:20.
By noontime--26 hours after leaving the day before--we had retrieved our car at the Alicante train station and were back home in our Montebello house, adjusting to the four-day vacation extension and hoping for strong winds in the southern hemisphere to move the volcanic ash out of Buenos Aires.
We have just made the phone call and been told that the Monday midnight departure is scheduled sin problemas. We have reserved our now favorite hotel for Monday night, for two persons. We are driving instead of taking the train, trusting Gloria to get us to the hotel, and the hotel to get us to the airport. And we are hoping for an uneventful trip and less than 36 hours in Madrid.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Agurketid and the Media
Agurketid is a Danish word that denotes the boring and inconsequential television programming that often sprouts in midsummer, when everyone is on vacation, but the airwaves still need to be filled with something. Literally, agurketid means "cucumber time." So it is fitting that we were in Denmark when we first heard reports that killer cucumbers from Spain had infected several people in northern Germany with E.coli bacteria.
I have to admit that initially I was glad to be out of Spain and in a place where I could still comfortably indulge in cucumber salad such as the one I had enjoyed just one or two days previously with friends from Tåsinge, an island in the south of Denmark. But then I remembered that we were not very far from northern Germany and that Denmark, like Germany, gets a lot of fresh produce from Spain. And the reports got worse. Soon cucumbers from Holland were also suspect, and then it wasn't just cucumbers, but tomatoes, and lettuce, and--according to some reports--any fresh vegetable.
By this time we had moved on to Warsaw and the only news reports we could understand were from CNN. Perhaps the Polish news was not reporting on the cucumber story, or not taking the danger seriously, or not being as alarmist as some media outlets, because at our first evening dinner in Warsaw, while we waited for some elegant entrees, we were offered complimentary appetizers, one of which was a spread of white cheese on huge slabs of raw cucumber. (I declined, but my friends and family know that it was the cheese, not the cucumbers, that turned me off.) A couple days later, I enjoyed a lunchtime green salad of mixed vegtables, and I continued to eat raw vegetables in moderation.
The agurk problem kept on spreading, affecting people in other countries (though almost all were reported to have visited northern Germany recently) and the story escalated. We were, of course, aware of the economic impact on farmers in Spain, where people are already suffering severely from the financial crisis. Soon reports began saying that Spanish cucumbers were not to blame. Now Germany is promising financial compensation to Spain for its premature and erroneous accusations, but how much money will trickle down to the individual farmers? And the cultural cracks between countries in the European Union are surfacing again.
I'm back in Spain. One of the first things I had to do was to buy fresh fruits and vegetables for our lunchtime salads. I filled my shopping cart with iceberg lettuce, spinach, multi-colored peppers, carrots, mushrooms, and a pepino holandés, as the long, thin cucumbers are called here. We are once again enjoying a little agurketid.
But the TV pictures of European farmers sweeping unsellable cucumbers into dumps are still disturbing. The Perishable Pundit has a good report on the serious consequences and causes of this agurketid, which has been anything but boring and inconsequential.
I have to admit that initially I was glad to be out of Spain and in a place where I could still comfortably indulge in cucumber salad such as the one I had enjoyed just one or two days previously with friends from Tåsinge, an island in the south of Denmark. But then I remembered that we were not very far from northern Germany and that Denmark, like Germany, gets a lot of fresh produce from Spain. And the reports got worse. Soon cucumbers from Holland were also suspect, and then it wasn't just cucumbers, but tomatoes, and lettuce, and--according to some reports--any fresh vegetable.
By this time we had moved on to Warsaw and the only news reports we could understand were from CNN. Perhaps the Polish news was not reporting on the cucumber story, or not taking the danger seriously, or not being as alarmist as some media outlets, because at our first evening dinner in Warsaw, while we waited for some elegant entrees, we were offered complimentary appetizers, one of which was a spread of white cheese on huge slabs of raw cucumber. (I declined, but my friends and family know that it was the cheese, not the cucumbers, that turned me off.) A couple days later, I enjoyed a lunchtime green salad of mixed vegtables, and I continued to eat raw vegetables in moderation.
The agurk problem kept on spreading, affecting people in other countries (though almost all were reported to have visited northern Germany recently) and the story escalated. We were, of course, aware of the economic impact on farmers in Spain, where people are already suffering severely from the financial crisis. Soon reports began saying that Spanish cucumbers were not to blame. Now Germany is promising financial compensation to Spain for its premature and erroneous accusations, but how much money will trickle down to the individual farmers? And the cultural cracks between countries in the European Union are surfacing again.
I'm back in Spain. One of the first things I had to do was to buy fresh fruits and vegetables for our lunchtime salads. I filled my shopping cart with iceberg lettuce, spinach, multi-colored peppers, carrots, mushrooms, and a pepino holandés, as the long, thin cucumbers are called here. We are once again enjoying a little agurketid.
But the TV pictures of European farmers sweeping unsellable cucumbers into dumps are still disturbing. The Perishable Pundit has a good report on the serious consequences and causes of this agurketid, which has been anything but boring and inconsequential.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Homecoming
After two weeks away on vacation in Denmark and Poland, I am once again spending Sunday in Spain. The day started early. I woke up at 3:15 AM in Copenhagen to check in at 4:30 for a 6:30 AM flight from Copenhagen to Alicante. Never in my wildest dreams would I have guessed how many people are up and about, moving through an airport on a Sunday morning in the wee hours. Of course we were out of our hotel before the complimentary breakfast buffet started, but we did snatch a cup of coffee in the lobby as we waited for our taxi to the airport. Once at CPH, we used the automatic self-check-in machines and then, after some difficulty, found the right station in which to drop our luggage. There were long lines at both the baggage drop and the security control. Once inside security we stopped again for a fresh fruit salad and made it to our gate just in time to walk directly onto the plane, with no waiting.
The three-hour flight went by quickly. The Norwegian Air Shuttle managed to fill the time with the sale of a Breakfast Box (coffee, orange juice, cheese sandwich, and two chewable Omega-3 tablets) and a movie that ran in complete silence, with Danish subtitles. Fortunately I had already seen The King's Speech, and wondered at the time what it would have been like to hear it with the Spanish dubbing that is the rule in Spain. This version had no sound at all, very effectively rendering the king speechless. The subtitles showed almost no indication of the stuttering heard in the real film. The only time that the text indicated a stutter was when Edward taunted his brother as B-B-B-Bertie. For those who had not previously seen and heard The King's Speech, this speechless version must have been confusing indeed.
We landed right on time at 9:40 AM, and had a pleasant drive home through sunny citrus orchards and surprisingly cool air. I have spent the very long day reading email, unpacking, and creating something edible from the contents of my freezer and pantry. It is delightful to get settled again after two weeks of travel. I'm off now to finish reading the last chapter of the novel for my Spanish lesson tomotrow, and then I will be back into a welcome daily routine.
The three-hour flight went by quickly. The Norwegian Air Shuttle managed to fill the time with the sale of a Breakfast Box (coffee, orange juice, cheese sandwich, and two chewable Omega-3 tablets) and a movie that ran in complete silence, with Danish subtitles. Fortunately I had already seen The King's Speech, and wondered at the time what it would have been like to hear it with the Spanish dubbing that is the rule in Spain. This version had no sound at all, very effectively rendering the king speechless. The subtitles showed almost no indication of the stuttering heard in the real film. The only time that the text indicated a stutter was when Edward taunted his brother as B-B-B-Bertie. For those who had not previously seen and heard The King's Speech, this speechless version must have been confusing indeed.
We landed right on time at 9:40 AM, and had a pleasant drive home through sunny citrus orchards and surprisingly cool air. I have spent the very long day reading email, unpacking, and creating something edible from the contents of my freezer and pantry. It is delightful to get settled again after two weeks of travel. I'm off now to finish reading the last chapter of the novel for my Spanish lesson tomotrow, and then I will be back into a welcome daily routine.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Local Elections
Sunday, May 22 is election day in Spain. As in many European countries, elections are held on Sunday so it is easier for people to find time to vote. I had been looking forward to this day for almost six months, which is when I found out that, as a legal and registered (empadronada) resident of Spain, I was allowed to vote in the local elections. At the time we registered, we were told to check in January to make sure our names were on the voting rolls, just in case.
So in January we took a trip to the ayuntamiento to make sure we were listed. Well, the voting rolls were not up yet. Try next month. In February we tried again, but no lists. In March we asked again when the voting list would be up. "Probably in April," which was a month before the election, and conveniently after the deadline for registering.
At some point around then we gave up worrying about whether we were on the list, because we realized that we had inadvertently scheduled ourselves to be on vacation out of the country on election day. I didn't even dream of going through the rigmarole of pursuing an absentee ballot. I just opted out of the election.
But last week all the free foreign papers carried articles about how to vote on Sunday, and I'm sorry that I will be on a plane before the polls open at 9:00 AM. You go to your polling place (probably the closest school, but if not, check at the town hall and ask your way from there). Once inside, select the paper ballot of the party you wish to vote for. That's right, you don't vote for individuals; you vote one party line. Of course, variety in Spain comes with the number of parties; I have seen ads for four or five, though the two most powerful parties are the PP (Parti Popular) and the PSOE (the Socialists). Foreign residents are only allowed to vote in local elections, which are white ballots. Pink ballots are for the autonomous comunidad election, in which only Spanish nationals can vote.
Once you have selected the paper ballot of your chosen party (and you may have brought one with you that the party had dropped off at your house earlier), you must be very careful not to make any mark on it. No X's, no pen or pencil marks of any kind--if there is a mark, the ballot will be invalidated. You place the unmarked ballot in one of the white envelopes and proceed to an official table, where you present your identity documents: a picture ID, which may be a passport, driver's license, or national identity card (though newer national identity "cards" no longer have a picture on them--go figure).
Your name will be checked against the official voting register for that polling place, and if it is there, you may drop the envelope with the unmarked ballot in the transparent urn on the table. That's it. Polls are open until 8:00 PM.
Our local community has been run by the PP for the last many years, I am told. They did some door-to-door convassing this week and dropped a ballpoint pen and a fan off, together with a sixteen-page glossy brochure voicing their commitment in English to community betterment. We also got one of those pre-ballots in the mail, and on both Thursday and Friday nights a cavalcade of 15 cars, with honking horns and blaring loudspeakers, drove by, exhorting us to vote PP. Almost enough to turn you socialist, or green. It will be interesting to see, when we return from vacation, who has won the election in our small town, and whether much change occurs in municipal services.
In the meantime, on the national scale, young people have been protesting against the current national PSOE government, and perhaps government in general, in Madrid. Now demonstrations have spread to most major cities and captured the attention of news agencies worldwide. The demonstrators are primarily young, because, in a country where more than 20 percent of people are unemployed, but 43 percent of young people are unemployed, they obviously have the time. No doubt I will not need to return to Spain to find out the results of the broader comunidad elections, nor the progress of the demonstrations.
So in January we took a trip to the ayuntamiento to make sure we were listed. Well, the voting rolls were not up yet. Try next month. In February we tried again, but no lists. In March we asked again when the voting list would be up. "Probably in April," which was a month before the election, and conveniently after the deadline for registering.
At some point around then we gave up worrying about whether we were on the list, because we realized that we had inadvertently scheduled ourselves to be on vacation out of the country on election day. I didn't even dream of going through the rigmarole of pursuing an absentee ballot. I just opted out of the election.
But last week all the free foreign papers carried articles about how to vote on Sunday, and I'm sorry that I will be on a plane before the polls open at 9:00 AM. You go to your polling place (probably the closest school, but if not, check at the town hall and ask your way from there). Once inside, select the paper ballot of the party you wish to vote for. That's right, you don't vote for individuals; you vote one party line. Of course, variety in Spain comes with the number of parties; I have seen ads for four or five, though the two most powerful parties are the PP (Parti Popular) and the PSOE (the Socialists). Foreign residents are only allowed to vote in local elections, which are white ballots. Pink ballots are for the autonomous comunidad election, in which only Spanish nationals can vote.
Once you have selected the paper ballot of your chosen party (and you may have brought one with you that the party had dropped off at your house earlier), you must be very careful not to make any mark on it. No X's, no pen or pencil marks of any kind--if there is a mark, the ballot will be invalidated. You place the unmarked ballot in one of the white envelopes and proceed to an official table, where you present your identity documents: a picture ID, which may be a passport, driver's license, or national identity card (though newer national identity "cards" no longer have a picture on them--go figure).
Your name will be checked against the official voting register for that polling place, and if it is there, you may drop the envelope with the unmarked ballot in the transparent urn on the table. That's it. Polls are open until 8:00 PM.
Our local community has been run by the PP for the last many years, I am told. They did some door-to-door convassing this week and dropped a ballpoint pen and a fan off, together with a sixteen-page glossy brochure voicing their commitment in English to community betterment. We also got one of those pre-ballots in the mail, and on both Thursday and Friday nights a cavalcade of 15 cars, with honking horns and blaring loudspeakers, drove by, exhorting us to vote PP. Almost enough to turn you socialist, or green. It will be interesting to see, when we return from vacation, who has won the election in our small town, and whether much change occurs in municipal services.
In the meantime, on the national scale, young people have been protesting against the current national PSOE government, and perhaps government in general, in Madrid. Now demonstrations have spread to most major cities and captured the attention of news agencies worldwide. The demonstrators are primarily young, because, in a country where more than 20 percent of people are unemployed, but 43 percent of young people are unemployed, they obviously have the time. No doubt I will not need to return to Spain to find out the results of the broader comunidad elections, nor the progress of the demonstrations.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Earthquake in Lorca
Thursday morning this past week I was up early, and after my customary wake-up exercise of transcribing a few dishes for the New York Public Library's What's on the Menu? project, I went to read email. And that's how I found out that the previous afternoon, there had been two earthquakes just about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from us. I hadn't felt a thing.
The first terramoto--just a "tremor" of 4.4 on the Richter scale--came a little before 5:00 PM local time, but it was the second, at 6:45 PM, at 5.2 magnitude, that did the terrible damage. Lorca is an old city. Buildings and cars were destroyed, the church lost its bell tower, ten people were at first declared dead (since confirmed to eight), and hundreds were injured, some quite seriously. The population is about 100,000 and I read one report that said that one-third of Lorca's inhabitants spent the night outside their homes. Nearly 80% of the buildings in town are now said to be damaged in some way.
On Wednesday afternoon I was calmly working in my office, and then I got dressed for dinner and we departed to spend the evening with friends at a birthday celebration. That was festive and undisturbed with any mention of the nearby disaster, and lasted long enough so I went to bed when we returned home, without checking email or accessing news.
So at 6:00 the next morning, I was surprised to find three messages--all from the United States--inquiring about my whereabouts and whether we were affected. I had to go looking for the news. But the only way we have been affected is the strange feeling that this particular disaster was uncommonly close. During the time that we traveled frequently between Roquetas and our home here near Torrevieja, we drove by (not through) the city of Lorca often. It is sad to see the pictures of the devastation in the news.
Over the past days, more inquiries and expressions of concern have come in. Thank you for them; it is nice to be remembered. And we are lucky.
The first terramoto--just a "tremor" of 4.4 on the Richter scale--came a little before 5:00 PM local time, but it was the second, at 6:45 PM, at 5.2 magnitude, that did the terrible damage. Lorca is an old city. Buildings and cars were destroyed, the church lost its bell tower, ten people were at first declared dead (since confirmed to eight), and hundreds were injured, some quite seriously. The population is about 100,000 and I read one report that said that one-third of Lorca's inhabitants spent the night outside their homes. Nearly 80% of the buildings in town are now said to be damaged in some way.
On Wednesday afternoon I was calmly working in my office, and then I got dressed for dinner and we departed to spend the evening with friends at a birthday celebration. That was festive and undisturbed with any mention of the nearby disaster, and lasted long enough so I went to bed when we returned home, without checking email or accessing news.
So at 6:00 the next morning, I was surprised to find three messages--all from the United States--inquiring about my whereabouts and whether we were affected. I had to go looking for the news. But the only way we have been affected is the strange feeling that this particular disaster was uncommonly close. During the time that we traveled frequently between Roquetas and our home here near Torrevieja, we drove by (not through) the city of Lorca often. It is sad to see the pictures of the devastation in the news.
Over the past days, more inquiries and expressions of concern have come in. Thank you for them; it is nice to be remembered. And we are lucky.
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