Gota Fría

At the end of September, Monday the 28th to be exact, we experienced our first gota fría in the Alicante region, and, according to reports, the worst in this area in twelve years. A gota fría, literally translated, is a cold drop (as in drop of water). In this context it refers to a weather phenomenon in which a cold front meets the warm air rising over the Mediterranean and dumps muchas gotas of agua onto the land below.

When we get rain here, which is not often, it almost always comes very conveniently at night. This time it started on Sunday mid-morning, and continued on and off all that day and night. Monday morning during a temporary "off" period we went out to the grocery store, since the rain the day before had kept us away from the local Sunday market. We bumped into friends at Lidl, decided to go for a cup of coffee, and sat too long inside talking as the rain poured down.

When we left we drove through rain-filled streets with water up to our hubcaps. We made our way slowly towards home, which thankfully sits on higher ground than the surrounding area, but we still had to get through that lower surrounding area. At the roundabout leading from the highway toward Montebello, we encountered more water, a couple cars coming toward us very slowly, and another abandoned on the side of the road. As we rounded a curve, we saw a car up ahead stalled in water up to the windows. We turned around and headed back to Ciudad Quesada, the closest commercial area, to find a more comfortable place to wait until the water went down.

El Bancal restauante was the first dry spot we came to--though the downstairs ladies room was flooded so the mens on the upper level became unisex. We warmed up in the restaurante with a tasty goulash soup and glass of wine. After ninety minutes or so we ventured out again, but only because a man there spoke on his cell phone with a friend in Montebello, who told him that the roundabout at the highway was now cordoned off but we might be able to get in by driving north to the town of Algorfa and then back south to come in "the back way." We did, holding our breath for much of the half hour it took to follow this detour, and arrived at our Montebello entrance intact and with motor still running.

Our house and most of the develoment were weathering the torrent with no problems, though the following day we discovered that a wall surrounding the green rubbish dumping area--adjacent to the back road by which we came--had caved in with the force of the rushing water.

Subsequent newspaper reports said that the torrents brought 100 liters of water per square meter in just four hours. If you don't know exactly how much that is, you are not alone. It is a lot! Hundreds of drivers abandoned their cars, and dozens of people had to be evacuated from their homes. But amazingly after the rains stopped, the water receded rapidly. By the next morning, when we had a 9:00 appointment to have the car inspected prior to its official inpection, we were able to drive out the front road, but the appointment was postponed as garages had more business than they could handle rescuing and cleaning mud-packed vehicles.

The news reports that this was the worst gota fría in twelve years. Also that it was only the first one of the season.

An Ikea Weekend

It's been an Ikea weekend again. Friday, on the drive back from a short visit in our former home town of Roquetas, we stopped at the Ikea in Murcia, in a never-ending quest to fill up just a little more wall space with books and bookcases.

Our timing was not good. We reached the highway around Murcia at 2:10 in the afternoon, just as thousands of people were headed home for Friday luncheon and siesta. Or so we thought. When we got into the Ikea parking lot, and then the store, we knew where they really went for siesta. Not sleeping in the furniture display as reportedly done in Beijing, but definitely passing the afternoon time of day.

Though we have practically memorized the downstairs warehouse location of Billys and Bennos, we still had to go upstairs into the exposition part of the store because there was one new (to us) model that we had to check out and get the stats on. A half hour later we were making our way through the warehouse, picking our packages, and then we spent several minutes in line before paying. No recession here! People were buying. Out to the parking lot gymnasium, where strange contortions are often evident as people (including us) struggle to get heavy packages into or onto the car or truck.

We managed to position four units inside our Ford Fusion and then returned to the second floor café for our traditional snack of canapé de gambas (open-faced shrimp sandwich) and cervesa sin (beer without (sin) alcohol). No siesta here! It seemed as though everyone in the store had assembled in the restaurante and were all eating, talking, and laughing with family. One more stop-off at the well-equipped tienda sueca to pick up arenque (herring) in various glass jars to take home for our Saturday smørrebrød. Arenque must not be as popular with the Spanish as the albóndigas and other hot dishes and desserts in the restaurant--they had lowered the price to a euro a jar!

Sated for now, and prepared for the next meal, we drove home single file, i.e., passenger behind the driver, as the bookcase boxes were spread on the entire right side of the car, from trunk through the front seat. On Saturday the man of the house magically turned cardboard boxes into standing bookcases, and the woman of the house prepared a smørrebrød with four kinds of herring. And today, we are emptying boxes under the bed and filling new bookcases in our offices and bedroom.

Tomato Country and More

During the brief time that I lived in Indiana, my sister introduced me to Red Gold, a small but excellent canner and processor of tomatoes grown northeast of Indianapolis. We enjoyed finding and purchasing the local brand whenever we had need for tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, tomato juice, or any other tomato something from their extensive brand and product list.

Now, totally unexpectedly on a visit to a rural hardware and building supply store near our Montebello home, I have found my local Spanish equivalent to Red Gold. The huge warehouse had a good-enough supply of kitchenwares that I browsed through while the other half of the family talked wood and a building project with the lumber people. But back in the corner I found a section promoting locally grown products. And this is how I found out that it's not just lemons, oranges, mangoes, and olives that are grown in this area. They also grow tomatoes.

I came away with a 390 gram can of tomate al natural pelado (peeled whole tomatoes) and a 400 gram can of tomate al natural triturado, categoria primera (tomato sauce, first quality) for a euro each. A smaller jar (300 grams) of Dulce de Tomate Extra (tomato jam) was three euros. There was a variety of brands and labels in the store, but I noticed after I got home that all three of my purchases were labeled Conservas Almoradí. Almoradí is a town only six or eight kilometers up the road from our home in Montebello--we had previously been there to get our health cards and to buy a few familiar but hard-to-find-in-Spain items at a British EuroStretcher warehouse store.

The two cans also bore a Gómez y Lorente, S.L. mark. When I checked out the Gómez y Lorente website at home, I found that in addition to tomato products, they do alcachofas (artichokes), pimientos (peppers), cebolla sofrita (onions sauteed in olive oil), brocoli, and habas (baby lima beans, also in olive oil). I only saw cans of various tomato products and the onion sofrita, but I look forward to trying the other local products as they become available. I might even try to like artichokes.

I purchased one other local product from the hardware store: Salt. We knew that they still mine salt from one of the two inland salt lakes in Torrevieja--we can sometimes see mountains of salt as we drive by on the road from Torrevieja to Montebello--but I had been completely unsuccessful in finding local salt from any grocery store in the area. Now I have it: Chaco refined sea salt for the table and cooking, packaged by Rocamora Hnos. in Torrevieja, 40 euro cents (about 60 US cents) for a kilo. But salt is a subject for another Sunday.

Rain in Spain

Last Sunday it rained in Spain--not terribly hard where we live, but the thunder was loud enough and the lightening close enough that I didn't want to tempt fate by keeping the computer connected to an electrical outlet, no matter that it is protected. We went out to visit friends in the early evening and remembered to leave a light on because we knew it would be dark by the time we returned home. When we came back at 9:30 the light was off, though street lights were still lit. Fortunately a flip of the circuit breaker restored power to the house.

It rained on and off for the next three days, and the temperatures dipped into the low 70s F. though it seemed colder in the early morning when we went out to play pétanque. By midweek I was beginning to wonder whether it was time to bring out long-sleeved clothing and relocate my summer sleeveless next-to-nothings to my winter undershirt drawer. Procrastination pays off sometimes. I did not renovate my wardrobe, though I did start to wear 3/4 length pants for the first time in three months.

Our garden benefited greatly from the rain--everything is clean and fresh--but the local Euro Weekly News paper is telling us that the rain caused flooding in Orihuela, the largest near-by city. In the Valencia region, it was feared that extended rain could damage the rice crops, but the storms seem to have passed over by now. Grape vines were damaged in the Utiel-Requena wine district west of Valencia, however, and the grape harvest is expected to fall by 50% this year. That's not good news for the local wine industry that we are beginning to explore.

A Trip to the Bodega

Last Thursday we took a bus tour inland to the village of Jumilla, in Murcia province. It was pleasant riding up high in a large tour bus; even though some of the roadway was familiar to us, we saw vegetation from a different angle than when passing through the countryside lower to the ground in a common car.

Our destination was the Finca Omblancas, a small winery just outside the town of Jumilla, which is home to at least ten wineries and bodegas. We had a spectacularly informative tour of the winery, which was purchased by its present family owners in 2002, who have made huge investments in modernizing production methods and improving quality.

Our tour started out in the vineyards, where the slightest touch of autumn coolness was making its welcome entry after a long hot summer. We moved inside to see the chute where grapes are delivered, dumped, and inspected for the second time (the first inspection is done by hand-pickers out in the vineyard). Then we went down to the huge stainless steel vats where the grapes and their juice are collected and ferment. It was here that I learned about the monastrell grape, a variety unique to Mediterranean countries, and the only grape that survived the Phylloxera epidemic that destroyed most of the vineyards of Europe in the late 19th century.

We passed on to the wine cellar and tasting room, where we tried three of the Omblancas wines--all interesting and worth a purchase--and then on to a nearby restaurant, where we enjoyed one of those lovely Spanish menú del día three-course luncheons. I had a wonderful gazpacho and finger-licking lamb chops. And this menú featured two more Omblancas wines, in generous quantities.

If I had written this post immediately after hearing about the processing and the monastrell grape, while we were still in the vat room, I would be able to tell you many more facts about wine making and Omblancas. But since we proceeded to the wine cellar and the luncheon, those facts floated out of my head with the flow of wine, so if you want to know more, you will have to follow the links highlighted here, and also, perhaps, to an interesting book called Let's Open a Bottle: My Journey through the Spanish Wine Revolution.

And did I mention how nice it was to have someone else driving the bus on the way home?

The Zoco Market

On Sunday morning we usually spend an hour or two at the Zoco market, a huge open-air bazaar or mercado that is only a couple miles from our house in Montebello. It's not exactly true that you can buy anything there, but you can buy an awful lot of different things. There are hundreds of stalls in a dozen or more aisles, selling various types of clothing (outer and inner), books, DVDs, ceramics, hardware supplies, kitchen utensils and cleaning supplies, window glazing, outdoor furniture, indoor furniture, flowers and plants, personal care items, and food.

Oh, the food! Vegetables and fruits, locally grown. Two weeks ago every fruit stall suddenly had figs, and that was how I learned that figs were in season (and they were gone the next week). Frutos secos (nuts), where I usually get the whole almonds I add to my morning cereal. Olives. Beans. Spices. Cheeses and more varieties of embutidos (sausages) than I knew existed. Bread. Cakes and pastries. Roast chicken on a spit, and paella, to take home with you in case you don't feel like making Sunday dinner. And it wouldn't be a market, or Spain, if there weren't lots of places to sit down and enjoy something to drink and eat on the spot.

We usually drive, because who knows what we might have to carry home? But this morning we decided we needed some walking exercise, so for the first time, we struck out on the short walk to the entrance of our urbanization, then down the country road going parallel to the highway, around the highway exit roundabout bringing cars from north and south, and up the path to the huge parking lot. It only took us twenty minutes from our door to the spot where we usually park the car, and then another five minutes through the lot to one of the entrances to the market, where hawkers were busy as usual, offering free day trips to a blanket factory somewhere in the area--"no purchase necessary."

After walking for a half hour in the sun we were ready for our ritual visit to the Danish pølsevogn at the back of the market. In addition to the traditional Danish hot dog, with all the trimmings, this hot dog stand also offers a fresh copy of today's Extra Bladet newspaper to read while you devour the dog and sip the Carlsberg.

Thus refreshed we made quick work of our shopping. Johannes found two DVDs to watch this week, and also a loaf of pan gallego, a delicious crusty bread that we had enjoyed for the first time as the base of a tostada in Alicante a couple weeks ago. I picked up fresh green beans and apples that I need for the Mediterranean salad and American apple cake I'm planning to make for overnight visitors this week. And then we decided to treat our visitors, and us, to a Danish pastry wienerbrød stang for breakfast, and shouldn't we also reward the man who consistently offers us delicious sharp bits of cheddar cheese each week--which we gladly accept but decline to purchase huge chunks of, for cholesterol reasons? Yes, we left the market with a five euro chunk of cheddar for our English friends, and for us.

By now we had enough to carry, so we headed out, stopping only to buy the Sunday El País, a former daily staple but now, due to rising newspaper prices and the lack of a corner kiosk, an occasional treat. The trip home took twice as long as the walk to the market. By 11:30 it is really hot and sunny, and we had to stop at Monty's, our local air-conditioned bar, for an agua con gas and café con leche to help us make the last few blocks to our house on Tomillo street.

Menú del Día

On Wednesday morning this week we left the house sooner than anticipated, because we got a sudden telephone call saying that Johannes' new glasses had arrived at the optician and were ready for pick-up. And was he ready to have them! We had intended to go out to Mercadona, one of the many local supermarkets we patronize, to buy the week's supply of heavy stuff: wine, two kinds of bottled water, and kitty litter. We limit our trips there to once a week or so, because it's a little farther away than we usually need to drive, and there are at least four other branded supermarkets between here and there.

Mercadona is on a direct line between our house and the optician's, so we rushed off to the optician's and planned on stopping at Mercadona on the way home. But the optician is right next to the large Habaneras shopping mall in Torrevieja, so we stashed the car in the coolness of the underground parking garage at Habaneras. did the business at the optician's, and then, since we were there, took a trip through AKI looking for wood for new shelves in the kitchen, and through the next-door Carrefour to try to find a suitable folding kitchen stool, and then, somehow three hours had gone by just like that. And we were hungry! And you know what they say about doing grocery shopping on an empty stomach.

So we did something that we hardly ever do--we went out for lunch. Our normal Mediterranean diet lunch consists of a mixed vegetable salad, with a fruit salad for dessert. But today we wanted more than a quick stop for a late-morning tostada or early tapa, and it was now well past 1:00, so we could be sure that restaurants were serving menú del día.

Menú del día is the best way to eat a meal in Spain that offers you choice and plenty of food, and does not bring you a surprise when you get the bill. Offered only at lunchtime--the main meal of the day for most Spaniards--it customarily allows you to choose from among three or four selections for your first course, main course, and dessert. A single beverage (wine, beer, or water) is often included in the fixed-price menu, but sometimes not--check so that you don't get surprised at the end of the meal. Prices (usually somewhere between 8 and 11 euros per person) and the selections for the menú del día are normally listed on a placard outside the restaurant.

We stopped at a place called The Dining Room, which we had noticed near the Mercadona on a previous trip, and were delighted to read on the poster that their menú del día could include only two courses for 6 euros, and we could choose either a starter or dessert in addition to the main course. I quickly decided on the grilled chicken for main course, though I was tempted by the lasagna. Beverage was clearly not included in the six euro price, and we were hot, though we had a table in the shade and a breeze occasionally blew through, so we ordered tinto de verano wine coolers (with ice!) and awaited our main courses.

Not too long a time passed (but enough so we ordered a bottle of water with more ice) before our plates appeared, each with three(!) small breasts of chicken, grilled, plus the usual french fries, plus a bonus of lettuce, tomatoes, and onion that was more than a garnish--at least a one-serving vegetable. This was an English bar and restaurant, but that's not why we got the chips--I have discovered that French fries are the usual accompaniment to fish or meat courses in Spain.

It was very filling, but we concluded our tasty lunch with dessert of watermelon for me and ice cream for my companion. Much more than we usually have for lunch, but thus fortified, we proceded on to Mercadona to accomplish that weekly purchase of wine, water, kitty litter, and a few more items. And then home to put away the purchases and fall into bed for one of those Spanish siestas.

Spanish Efficiency

Since I've shared my frustration about going through trámites over the past few weeks, I thought I should let you know that some things go right, and fairly quickly.

Two weeks ago, we discovered a water leak in our underbuild, also known as the half-cellar underneath the house. Careful investigation revealed that it probably came from a leak in water pipes going underneath the floor tiling in the main floor bathroom. This sent panic into my heart, as we had already met another couple in this development who had a similar problem with their main floor bathroom. The repairman that their insurance company sent in managed to dig up and destroy every single one of the floor tiles in the bathroom before finding that the problem was at the very entrance to the room. After some time, they got their leak fixed and the floor tiles replaced--albeit not with the same type of tiles that had been installed when the house was built eight years ago--but the water had not been connected some months later. I really didn't want my entire bathroom floor dug up, and I certainly didn't want a non-functioning bathroom for months on end.

We contacted our insurance company, and last week a young repairman came to determine the cause of our problem. He announced immediately that it was probably a leak in the pipes underneath the floor at the door to the bathroom. He drilled and made a horrible racket, but he found the leak and repaired it, and only destroyed two tiles in the process. This week, another repairman showed up to replace the tiles. We had already scouted out an acceptable near-match for the sea green mist tiles on the floor, but he had found a better one. He also drilled and made a horrible racket, but when he was done, the two tiles were in place and you might not notice, as you walk into the bathroom, that they are slightly different from the rest of the floor.

There's something very nice about how the insurance system works in Spain. Something goes wrong. You call the insurance company. They send someone to fix it. You don't have to get estimates from three different service providers; you don't have to pay the repairman; you don't have to subtract the deductible. Since the repairmen are hired by the insurance company, you don't have to fight about the insurance at all, and chances are, the repair person knows the situation as well as or better than you do. Our guy diagnosed the problem as soon as he walked in the door--he had already fixed two other similar leaks in our development (not the one at our friends' house--they had a different insurance company).

All we had to do was to be home to let the workmen in, and, after the job was completed, verify by phone that we were satisfied.

The Orange Grove

When we first moved into this house in Montebello, I wrote that I had a view of orange trees from my bathroom window, but there were no oranges on the trees. That was true in June.

Now in August, as you can see on the photograph to the right, there are some oranges on the trees. True, they are not yet orange. I have no idea when they will turn orange, but I'll keep you posted.

The Greatest Sandbox

On most mornings, we head out of the house at about 8:00 to walk to the play area in our Montebello urbanization to get in three or four games of pétanque. The recreation area includes a soccer field (in the foreground to the left), a children's playground with slide and swings, two pétanque lanes, and a handball court. It's all "paved" in fine beige sand.

This morning as we went out the door and locked the gate, Goldie refused to come inside and wait for our return. Oh well, she could wander in our street for awhile, and she could even jump the fence and find a shady place to wait for us to come back an hour later.

We walked the block down the street, and then another block past the orange grove, over to the recreation area. We were just at the point of throwing out the first ball when who should appear but Goldie, who had followed at a discreet distance. She nosed around the pétanque lane, discovered that the red "pig" ball was not some of her dry cat food, occasionally chased one of the metal balls, and wandered off to inspect the other recreation facilities and the adjacent orange trees.

And then, sure enough, she reacted to the largest sandbox she had ever seen and used it just as she would her litter box at home.

The next time Goldie comes with us to pétanque, we'll bring a plastic bag.

Summer Shopping Sundays

Summer Sundays in Spain are different from winter Sundays, at least on the coast. During July and August people from the north of Spain flock to the southern and eastern costas, and people from the interior parts of the southern and eastern provinces also flood outwards to the beaches. Locals who live year-round on the coast sigh and moan about the lack of parking spaces, but they know how their bread is buttered, or more precisely, adorned with olive oil: tourism.

I have another reason to look forward to the thousands of tourists who come during these weeks. The arrival of tourists to an official tourist region means store openings on Sundays. Yes, Spain still lives most of the year with Sunday being a "day of rest" from commercialism, as long as you don't count the busy Sunday outdoor market or the hundreds of restaurants, bars, and cafeterías that do big business on the "day off." But for Sundays in December and the summer holidays, the larger grocery stores and entire shopping centers that are located in tourist areas are given special dispensation to stay open on Sunday to cater to tourists.

Everyone, I think, loves it. You do not hear just English, German, French, and Scandinavian voices comparing prices and value in Carrefours, Lidl, Consum, and Eroski on Sunday. You also hear Spanish, and you see lots of Spaniards pushing gigantic shopping carts filled with clothing, shoes, electronics, and food. The entire Gran Plaza shopping center had been open on summer Sundays when we lived in Roquetas, and we had noticed that nearly every grocery, hipermercado, and large hardware and building supply store that we have entered here on the Costa Blanca also carry signs advising that they are open on Sunday in July, August, and the first half of September.

Which is why we skipped our usual visit to the local outdoor market this morning and headed to the Ikea in Murcia. They had been out of the shelving we need for the kitchen on our last visit, and their online site now showed that stock had been replenished. We have gone so often to this Ikea that we know the shortest and easiest way, and we have it down to just about a 45 minute ride, only the last five minutes of which are heavy with traffic.

But today we noticed that there was practically no traffic during the last five minutes, and when we approached the parking lot in less than five, we realized there were no cars--none at all--in the parking lot. Sure enough, the sign on the door listed the Sundays and festivos that Ikea is open, but there was a big blank next to the month of agosto. We drove around to several other big box stores, and even parked and went into a shopping mall, to see whether there were any signs that anything might be open in the next few hours. A few other cars were doing the same thing, and the voices of disappointment we heard were Spanish.

Giving special tourism dispensation is a local prerogative. Obviously the officials who are authorized to make this decision in the province and city of Murcia have chosen not to allow Sunday opening during the summer months. Oh, the frustration! I had already been anticipating my favorite treat from Ikea's cafeteria for lunch. But that was counting my shrimp before they had nestled down on an open-faced sandwich.

Back in the car we turned again toward Alicante province and home. I remembered years ago when we lived in northern Massachusetts--still under blue laws at that time, but no more--and we would drive across the border into New Hampshire to shop on Sunday. We even bought one of our cars one Sunday in New Hampshire. Now we passed by our house in Montebello and the open-air market, which was still going strong and tying up traffic, and proceeded on to the Habaneras shopping center on the outskirts of Torrevieja. Everything was open. I noticed that even McDonald's had a sign out saying they serve breakfast from 9:00 until noon (previously they never opened until 11:00). I wonder if that is permanent, or summer-time only.

We spent an hour in the AKI home DIY center, and came out with above-bed lamps, energy-saving bulbs, and the electric cable and switches to install them. So not all was lost. At least we got something for the house, and we still had time left to do a home project on this Sunday in Spain.

If It's Tuesday...

Tuesday this past week was the day we set out to be at the office in Orihuela early to go through the trámite of getting my social security number. We didn't make it quite by the 8:30 opening time. Just as well. When we arrived at 8:40 there were already people outside the door, standing, some smoking, most talking, waiting their turn. We hurried inside and picked up our number: number 105!

The inside office was packed, but it was air conditioned. Needless to say, the few seats were already taken. We stood at a counter-top desk along the far side of the room and worked on a sudoku. After a few minutes, we checked the sign that told what number was being served. It was number ten.

At 9:30 we went outside for a little air. We walked around the corner and found a cafetería with tables in the sun. The air was still fresh, and we sat out with a cup of coffee. There was a kiosk down the street, and we added a morning newspaper to the paperwork we had with us to pass the time.

Back at the social security office, we checked the number sign again. As in offices everywhere of this nature, there were multiple desks--at least six--and as in offices everywhere, not all of them were working. I saw three in operation, and we calculated that the numbers were moving along at the rate of about 30 per hour.

More sudoku. More newspaper reading. More watching the people as they came to the intake desk to get a number. And then we noticed that no more numbers were being given out. It was only 10:30, but the "appointments" for the day were filled. The lady at the reception desk simply said that there were no more numbers: "Mañana. Come back tomorrow." This was small comfort for the multitude of people--Spanish, English, a few German--who were coming in to an office that is open from 8:30 to 1:30 and who had expected to be served that day. It's not an unusual state of affairs in Spain, and most Spaniards took it philosophically. Some English were a bit more panicked. One woman explained that she had been there before and never seen it so busy, but now she was going to England on holiday at the end of the week, and needed the European card that extended her healthcare rights out of Spain and throughout the EU. Some new EU regulation had revised procedures and required the issuing of new cards.

We went out for another coffee and a tostada, this time at a cafetería in the shade. Thus fortified, we returned for our final wait. At 11:30 we passed the 100 mark and began to inch our way toward the front of the room where the consultation desks were staged. For the first time, I saw that the room was much larger than I had noticed before, and there were many more seats toward the front. But they were still all filled. Finally, number 105 was called for desk number 6.

We explained to the young woman at the desk that we had moved our residence from Andalucía, that I had to exchange my previous health card for one valid here, that we had completed empadronamiento, and that we had been sent here by the Almoradí centro de salud. My heart sank as I heard her explain that, since I am not a European citizen, I qualify for the health card only through my husband, who is a European, and could she please see our marriage certificate. We had gone through that process before, when I originally got the card in Roquetas. It involved finding the original of our Ohio marriage certificate, going to Denmark, establishing the fact that we had indeed been legal residents there long ago, and getting an official translation (to the tune of 300€) into Spanish of the marriage certificate and the Danish residence papers.

Presumably we have that paper in our files somewhere, but it had not occurred to us to take it with us this morning, because I did have my Spain residence card and the prior health card, which I could only have gotten after showing those marriage papers. Too much logic! But in time, we convinced the young woman that she didn't need to see those papers once again. At noon time we left the office, a signed and stamped letter authorizing me to receive health benefits in hand.

Wednesday, we took that valuable piece of paper back to the centro de salud in Almoradí, where it took a relatively short time (a half hour, but that's another story) to get my health card.

We had intended to have a day out and play tourist in Orihuela after getting the paper, but by early afternoon, we had energy only to find our way to the tourist office, pick up a map and brochures, and retire to a cafetería for a bit of lunch and leafing through the literature. Seeing more of Orihuela than the 50 meters around the social security office will have to wait for another day.

The Trámites of Moving

Trámites in Spanish refers to to steps to be taken, or to procedures. Inevitably, these are bureaucratic procedures, and even though the word exists in singular form, it is most often seen in plural. There are always many steps to be taken. This week we have been occupied in the trámites of moving, the procedures one follows to officially re-establish residence in a new residence.

The first step is empadronamiento, the registration of your new address at the local ayuntamiento, or town hall. Even though we moved some two months ago, we had not taken this step yet because you need to produce evidence of the fact that you really live where you say you live. Evidence can be a water or electric bill, but since most people living in Spain these days have those bills paid automatically by direct debit from a bank account, and since monthly accounting statements have dropped to bi-monthly or quarterly statements, you may have to wait some time before collecting that evidence. We took a copy of the deed to the house we had bought, which itself took a few weeks to be forwarded to us from the registro of deeds.

That evidence plus our NIE cards (an ID card showing we are foreigners, but legal residents--Spain's version of the U.S. "green card") was accepted by the man behind the Información desk at the Algorfa ayuntamiento. We moved on to another desk to receive the paper copy of our empadronamiento. In addition to this certificate, we had to fill out and sign a paper to be included in the local census. Questions included age, place of birth, level of education attained, and occupation. This is important, we have learned, because it establishes officially that there is a large foreign population in certain areas, and it helps increase services to those growing populations.

In addition to what we are required to fill out for the census, we could elect to register to vote. I am pleased that my official residence, despite the fact that I am not a Spanish citizen, allows me to vote in local elections and in EU elections for representatives to the European Parliament!

Next task was the transfer of our health care cards from Andalucía, the comunidad where we previously lived, to Alicante, our new comunidad. This involved a couple trips, because the first centro de salud (health center) in Algorfa wasn't open and then we found we had to go further up the chain to the centro de salud in Almoradí. My husband came out with his new card and a new doctor, and therefore can now make an appointment for any health matter he wants to discuss or investigate. There was a glitch in my transfer. For some reason that was not important in Andalucía but is in Alicante, I don't have a social security number--that's right, there are not enough numbers in my life.

We had to go to yet another office in yet another administrative center further up the bureaucratic chain to register for my número de seguridad social. We found the office in Orihuela--I think we only had to stop the car and ask four times for directions--but at almost noon, the office was not accepting any more clients for that day. The remainder of that trámite awaits completion this coming week, when we expect to be at the office when it opens at 8:30 on Tuesday. Then, presumably, back to the centro de salud in Almoradí for the health services card. But perhaps not before playing tourist in Orihuela for a few hours and seeing what that old city has to offer.

We also spent time at the tax office finding out what taxes are due when on the car and the house property, and we still need to change the address for the car and driver's license. That gets done at the Dirección General de Tráfico in Alicante. Another day, another trámite. And another opportunity for a day out to explore.

Summer Heat Wave / Working on a Tan

Having been away from Spain for almost a month, I thought I was prepared to return in July to really hot weather. I got it, but I was not prepared nearly enough for it.

The heat was not too bad as we drove the six or so hours from Madrid to Alicante province; after all, we were cruising along (except for three construction tie-ups) in an air-conditioned car. It only became evident when we entered the house that had been closed up for the two days prior to my arrival. Central air conditioning does not exist in Spain, at least for me and everyone else I know. I have always considered central air conditioning a derivative of central heat, and we don't have central heat, or duct work to support it--and air conditioning--either. Instead we make do with wall-mounted heating/cooling machines that do work very well and silently, and can cool larger areas than the room in which they are located if they are positioned advantageously. We have a machine in the downstairs dining room, which I have discovered does not stretch to the living room, as I had hoped. And we have one in the master bedroom upstairs, which works fine but doesn't cool off much of anything else but the bedroom.

Other rooms can often be cooled by opening windows for a cross breeze, using the overhead fans, or using portable fans and even a portable air conditioner once we figure out how to set it up to empty water to the outside. But Friday there was not a breeze within miles, and temperatures reached the high eighties inside, or maybe more--I couldn't bear to look. In the afternoon we went out to play pétanque in the blazing sun, and there was hardly a breeze there. The combined effects of jet lag and unaccustomed heat did nothing for my game--I lost two and no one felt like playing the third game we usually do.

Saturday, and today, we have been blessed with slightly cooler weather at times, and with gentle but regular winds. I can keep my kitchen door and window open and get the temperatures down to pleasantly low seventies there, but I still have decided to adopt that old practice from the 1950s of cooking in the early morning hours and serving mostly cold foods for dinner. We can open two of the sliding glass doors that form the front conservatory at noon and make the room pleasant for our lunchtime salad. I keep the rejas, the metal rolling blinds, down in my office to keep out the warmth of the morning and afternoon sun that comes in, and the overhead fan on high, and only occasionally turn on a light to check my keyboarding or read a paper. But the best is that we can open the door to the upstairs terrace, which is located just outside my office door. It brings in light from the terrace and shoots cool breezes down the open stairwell to the dining room downstairs. Climate control in this house is mostly a matter of opening and closing doors.

Another sign of how much warmer it is here now than it was in June: In June I had to hang the towels from our morning showers out to dry in the sun each day. Now they just hang in the bathroom and are dry long before their next use. You would think, too, that the freshly laundered clothing that I hang on the lines on the upstairs terrace would be dry by the time the next load of wash is ready for the line. Alas, no. Something seems to have gone kaflooey with the spin cycle on the washing machine we inherited with this house--there is no centrifuge, so the clothes come out still filled with water. Nevertheless, they do dry within a day, though they are a little bit heavy to cart up from the kitchen washing machine to the rooftop hanging area. I think a new washer-dryer combination--and a new location for it--is in the near future.

But the real proof of the strong sun is in my feet. I had to bandage up a single toe on one foot as protection against a rubbing sandal top when in Chicago at a conference last week, and I neglected to take the band-aid off until two days after I was back in Spain. Now I have one toe indubitably paler than the other nine that have been exposed to the sun just by walking around. Just what I need for a summer task: working on a tan for my fourth right toe!

Welcome to Montebello

We live in an urbanization (neighborhood development) called Montebello, which means "beautiful hill," and there is indeed a small incline on the street we walk to go up to the neighborhood recycling center. We are part of the municipality called Algorfa, though we are closer to some urbanized parts of the town of Rojales, namely Ciudad Quesada, than to the commercial center of Algorfa. Our mail comes through Ciudad Quesada, and I can see the lights on the Quesada hill from my office window at night. There is talk that our urbanization may be reassigned to Rojales in the future, though I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

There are 177 houses in our urbanization; about 40 of them are holiday homes, and the rest are used as primary, or at least secondary, residences. The area started development nine years ago and was marketed heavily to the British, so we hear mostly English voices while sitting in the sun room, working in the kitchen with the back door open to catch a breeze, or when we stop in at the local bar-cafe after taking the trash and garbage out in the evening. Several houses are for sale now; this reflects the worldwide economic situation that the Spaniards call simply La Crisis, the fact that in recent months the British pound has fallen drastically in relation to the euro (the US dollar managed the same feat much earlier), and a natural generational shift that I have observed marks many retirement communities, whether European or American.

We live on the edge of the urbanization, on Avenida del Tomillo. Tomillo is a variety of thyme. The other avenida surrounding the development is Romero, rosemary. I have looked, but there is no Parsley or Sage. But we do have streets named Olivo, Mimosa, Eucalyptus, and a couple other types of vegetation that I will need to commit to memory on a later walk around the area.

We have a neighborhood swimming pool, two pétanque courts and soccer field, children's play yard, and a couple park areas on one side of the development. At the entrance is the aforementioned bar-cafetería, Monty's, a hairdressing salon, and a locale to rent--there used to be a corner grocery but the proprietor died, I am told. A big five-year project has been started to build a huge shopping center on the road leading to our development. This will be within two kilometers of our entrance and I look forward to not having to get into the car every time I need to go out to buy some little thing. The project is on hold for a time during La Crisis, but we have been assured it will resume when the economy improves.

The shopping mall will replace a cement factory. The orange grove on the opposite side of the urbanization remains, for as long as we are here, I hope.

My Morning View

In our house in Montebello, I begin each day by swinging open the bathroom window to see whether I can see the mountains in the distance. These are not high mountains, nor are they almost within touching distance, as the mountains of New Hampshire's Kinsman Range were from our home in Easton. But I feel very lucky to be able to look out into clear, crisp air, as it has been every day since we moved in, and see mountains at all. Some days it has been hazy in the morning and the range is barely visible to my eyes--in fact, it wasn't until the second day of our life here that I knew there were mountains there at all.

The first thing I see when I look out is the nearby orange grove. There are no oranges on the trees at this time of year, but the local word is that each inhabitant of our community is entitled to one orange per day in season--two if you are pregnant, which is not likely for me or for many of our neighbors. It's wonderful to see and smell the greenery, to hear the birds chirping, and to feel clean air.

Closer in to the window are the sand-colored houses with their red-tiled roofs and white fences surrounding the second-floor sun terraces. A neighbor to the right has a large un-opened parasol on his roof, and I can gauge the wind by seeing how much it flutters in the breeze. Another neighbor on the first line behind the orange grove appears to have a covered jacuzzi taking up much of his terrace, but I've never seen anyone in it nor anywhere else on that second floor. In fact, I've never seen anyone else outside my bathroom window as I stand there each morning and take in the day. It's a wonderfully peaceful way to begin anew each morning.

A Sunny Day in Alicante

It's not Sunday, but after more than a week of living surrounded by boxes of possessions to unpack and boxes of furniture to assemble, we declared today, Tuesday, to be Sunday and set off by car and train to the "big city" of Alicante, capital of our new province of Alicante.

The closest train station is Catral, which turned out to be a ten-minute drive up the highway from our house. We bought round-trip tickets to Alicante for the really low price of 4€ and change and had a cup of café con leche while we waited for the hourly train in the picturesque rural station. The one-hour ride into the city made five stops along the way, a couple that we noted for future exploration. Besides orange groves and palm tree farms, it took us by the Holiday Inn Express near the Alicante airport, where I had spent my first night in Spain when we came to investigate seven years ago. We've stayed at that modern hotel once since then, as it is convenient to the airport and sits quaintly across from not only the train track and the major thoroughfare to drive into Alicante from the south, but also just beside the ledge upon which a large modern building that houses Spain's patent office sits. Oh yes, there's a nice view of the Mediterranean, too, if you're on the side that does not look at the patent office.

Although the day started out hazy, by the time we reached the city it was sunny with a light breeze, and we refreshed ourselves at an outdoor café with giant goblets of tinto de verano (a red wine spritzer that heralds the summer) and a tapa of tortilla. We walked down a couple main streets toward the waterfront, stopping for a longish browse through El Corte Inglés, perhaps the Nordstrom's of Spain, with branches in all the major cities, but only in the major cities...so it is always a treat on the rare occasions when we are in a location that has one. The travel department of El Corte Inglés was not able to get us a reservation at a good rate at the hotel we had picked out for a future trip to Madrid, but we ambled through the furniture and home electronics sections and discovered that service still exists. If we order a bed, mattress, TV, or other large item, it will be transported to our home at the floor price quoted, with no delivery charge. Even the sale items on oferta!

Mostly we just enjoyed the experience of being in a real city that is not just a tourist area. We continued walking and stopped again for sustenance, this time an all-day breakfast of café con leche, juice, and a tostada. Orange juice is almost always served in Spain with a packet of sugar on the side, though I think that is decidedly unnecessary. I eat my tostada (a toasted half baguette) simply, with a sprinkling of olive oil over the tomato jam.

We were just in time for the 3:10 train back to Catral, and we walked in our door at 4:15. And made the reservation for the Madrid hotel at a good price through the Internet.

Goldie's Big Day

It's 7:30 AM and I awoke to the birds chirping two hours ago. We were downstairs early, even before there was full daylight, eating breakfast in the small sunroom/entrance to our house. This was to be Goldie's big day.

We had kept our cat inside for five days so she could adjust to her new home and recover from the terror of moving once again, cracking the windows slightly open to let the smells enter into her unconscious memory but prevent her from squeezing out, and suffering ourselves from lack of fresh air and cross breezes. Yesterday had been particularly terrifying for Goldie, with all the noise of drilling to admit cable and men crawling on the roofs and clattering up and down stairs. Goldie spent yesterday morning cowering in a corner of the downstairs office, well protected by boxes of books and miscellanea.

This morning at 6:30 we slid the glass door wider open than the inch or two that she had been nosing at, and soon she was out the door. Not running and dancing for joy--she stopped on the top step and looked behind, seeming to inquire why we weren't after her to scold her or bring her back in. We sat tight, and she proceeded down the other stair step, then walked over to the yucca plant and sniffed. Soon she proceeded to the pineapple palm, and then she reversed direction and walked around to the other side of the front room and nosed around the plantings there next to the three-person outdoor seating area. The next thing we knew, she had hopped over the greenery to the garden path leading down to a couple houses behind our property. We left her to explore and went about our morning routines.

At 7:00 I heard a loud continuous noise and walked out on the rooftop terrace to investigate. A large piece of vehicular machinery with a flashing yellow light was coming down Avenida del Tomillo. As it got closer, I realized it was washing the street. Ah, perhaps every Wednesday is street-cleaning day. I'll try to remember that next week so we can park the car inside the gate instead of leaving it on the street. The machine and the person driving it didn't seem to mind, however, as they maneuvered around several cars on the street. The dog on the other side of the street didn't appreciate the invasion, though, and who knows what Goldie was thinking about yet more noise?

I went downstairs to see if she had made her return appearance yet. We had left the glass door to the sunroom open, but closed and locked the grating on the front door of the house. (Locks, keys, door and window grills and grating are a major fact of life in Spain--we have four keys to go through just to get into our living room.) I saw Goldie outside the sunroom, sniffing at the bougainvillea. Then I turned my back, asked a question, and went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee. I came out and looked from the living room through the grate and sunroom, and whistled to try to encourage her to come inside. And she appeared, totally unexpectedly, from behind me in the house! She can walk easily through the spaces in the grating.

For coming home promptly, of course, she got a special treat. If she continues to get rewarded each time she goes out and returns, she may soon not be able to fit through the grating.

Back in the World

We were in the process of moving out of our Roquetas apartment. Experience told us that it took a long time to close or cancel a utility service contract. So we asked a gestoria (management company) to stop or transfer accounts for telephone, water, and electricity, to be effective immediately after we left the apartment.

Suddenly, Thursday noontime, May 7, a full day before we were due to close on our sale, and some hours before I had planned to write business and personal contacts to say that the time was now that we were making the move that had been in the works for months, it went black. There was no phone. There was no Internet.

There began 18 days of disconnection from my world. I already knew that I lived, professionally and personally, through the Internet. If I had not realized it before, I would surely know it now. Wi-fi spaces are few and far between in Spain, Internet cafés are open limited hours, and resort hotels are more interested in providing a sandy beach, pool, tennis or golf, proximity to the paseo, good restaurant service, and live entertainment than access to the Internet.

We moved temporarily (for a planned two weeks) to a gorgeous holiday apartment in Torrevieja, perfect in every way except no Internet or even land-line phone. During that time we spent four days in Madrid at a lovely reunion of engineering college classmates and their wives. But I could buy wireless in-room Internet access from Telefonica for a rather high 14€ (US$20) for a 24-hour period. Balancing the social life and the hours available, I was able to stretch 2 periods of access over the time I was there.

Back in Torrevieja, it turned out that our host's offer of using his office's network connection was his home office. Fine, except for the fact that my U.S. conference calls and meetings were scheduled from 8:00 PM until 11:00 PM Spanish time. Perhaps OK for the Spanish, but a little too intimate for a new acquaintance, and definitely too late for me to venture outside of my home-away-from-home to conduct business at that hour.

Because it had been reserved by others, we had to move out of our temporary apartment two days before moving into our new house, so we found a beautiful four-star, newly renovated beachfront hotel for two nights. You would expect Internet purchase options similar to those I found in Madrid, right? But no. I was invited to use one of the two desks in the lobby, for free, to connect via the wi-fi that was available in the lobby only. Again, would I want to conduct business in a public hotel lobby at 10:00 or 11:00 PM?

And then, two days before signing papers on the new house, we called to order the installation of broadband Internet service from Telefonica...only to discover that Telefonica could not guarantee accessibility in our nine-year-old, well-established "rural" area of 177 homes. This in spite of the fact that other residents already had Telefonica contracts for broadband.

Panic set in, but we located iAksess, a microwave provider, that promised to come and check the signal and then, it proving good, to place an antenna on our red-tiled roof to receive microwaves, and to install the wires down through the tiles and terraces and even behind the yucca and prickly cacti growing around the house. Thanks to the guys from iAksess, who spent the entire morning here, I am able to send this Sundays in Spain post from my new, connected office on Spain's Costa Blanca. And I feel as though I am back in the world again.

All Boxed In

I'm up to my shoulders--well, perhaps above them--in boxes. That's because we're packing up to relocate to the Alicante area of Spain, back where this blog began some six months ago.

I'm a frequent mover, though most of my moves have been between houses in the United States. We are also mostly do-it-yourself movers, or at least do-it-yourself packers, because although I keep sorting and disposing of books, papers, clothing, kitchen utensils, household decorations and whatever else it is that brings comfort and clutter to my homes, there is always too much to invite someone in to relieve me of this personal task. I don't think it's true, but maybe I'm fooling myself and the only time I really do sort and clean out is when I move house.

Considering the fact that everything in this house was either acquired on this side of the Atlantic within the past five years, or carefully brought over in my two-suitcase allotment on biennial trips to the U.S., I've got a lot of stuff. But there's not too much time to sort through this time--we were told on Thursday afternoon that our buyers wanted to take possession of the apartment the following Thursday. That would be this coming Thursday. Given the economy and the turgid real estate market, what the buyer says, goes. So we were boxed in to an earlier-than-expected moving date.

In most previous moves, the main type of moving crate has been the time-honored liquor carton. When we moved from the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the Midwest six years ago, we started to drive to different state liquor stores to pick up boxes, not because I was worried that my soon-to-be former neighbors might think I drank too much, but because I was worried that the state store clerks would think we had too much stuff.

They do not have state liquor stores in Spain, but we have been living on the main street of town, within a ten-minute walk of three grocery stores, a stationery shop, and numerous bars and restaurants. (Lots of banks, too, but they aren't receiving any deposits in crates these days). We are also within reach of several trash/recycling centers, so we've started timing our daily walks to throw-out time. People are not supposed to leave cardboard boxes on the ground outside the dumpster, but thank heavens they do. Here, in contrast to most places I've lived before, the sanitation workers actually pick those up and dispose of them properly instead of letting them sit until the next day or the next wind and rain.

We have a very different supply of cardboard moving cartons in this commercial environment. I've explored my piles to see what markings on the boxes reveal about their former contents and discovered how little I know about the many consumer products of Spain. Here's what I can see:

• Coviran Papel Aliminio - aluminum foil for the small grocery store next door
• Hidalgo Pan Precocido - Prebaked bread, lots and lots of boxes from the supermarket down the street. So that's why they always had fresh bread coming out of their ovens!
• Mercadona Barra Bolo - more bread variations from the supermarket
• TempleOliva: 8X2L of olive oil
• Vinagre de Vino Blanco Procer - vinegar to go with the olive oil, of course
• Carnicas Roquetas - some beef product, judging by the silly cow on the side of the box
• Aperitivas - a wide variety of snacks to nibble with your wine
• the box from somebody's Phillips CD Sound Machine
• a Humax 22" Easy Digital flatscreen TV box--I wonder why TV screens are measured in inches here?
• a Tupperware Breadsmart machine box
• something marked AllinOne - a dishwasher liquid
• Plasticos Seguros - I'm not sure even after checking Google España. "Secure plastics" could be anything from baby bottles to plastic gloves, to...you name it
• Ibico binding covers
• 12 unidades El Baño Aloe Vera marked Muy Fragile, so I used those to pack glassware
• Nueces Cascara Hacendada - nuts in their shell, supermarket brand
• something marked Girasol (sunflower) from Moldavia
• Something marked Risi.es that I never heard of before - seems to be a high-calorie fried snack aimed at kids
• A couple gorgeous flat boxes sent to Modas de Ana, one of the nice ladies' clothing stores in town
• something labeled Ron Brugal Añejo - a liquor from the Dominican Republic
• and one fine box marked Johnnie Walker Red Label

Well, that's enough of a break. I still have some empty boxes to fill.

Gazpacho!

When I asked for gazpacho one of the first times I dined out after moving to Spain, the waiter looked at me, horrified. That's because we moved here in November, and I asked for gazpacho in the winter. Gazpacho is a summer dish.

There are probably as many recipes for gazpacho as there are Spaniards. This Spanish food site has a decent recipe, and an even more interesting history of the dish. It claims that gazpacho originated at the time the Romans were building aqueducts throughout Spain. That, of course, was before Columbus sailed to the New World and brought back many culinary staples for the first time, one of them being the tomato. Gazpacho existed without tomatoes? That was a different kind of gazpacho.

This week on Tuesday, we joined about 20 friends for one of the monthly English-speaking club luncheons that we have enjoyed over the years that we have been in Roquetas. And I enjoyed this season's first gazpacho. I like the way that El Bodegón serves it, with very finely diced onion, pepper, and cucumber to sprinkle on top, so the gazpacho truly does become a liquid salad.

I'm looking forward to many more gazpachos this summer.

Layers for the Sun and April Showers

We have had such splendid summer-like weather this week that by Friday I was ready to pack away my spring clothes (light-weight, long-sleeved) and replace them with the really light summer garments that I change into and out of four times a day during the hot summer months.

It's a good thing I have mastered the art of procrastination.

The nice weather at the begining of the week built up to temperatures in the mid 80s on Friday. We brought our folding bikes (unfolded, standing upright) down two flights in the three-person elevator and rode toward the village of Aguadulce. Almost immediately I realized that the shallow V-neck, cap sleeved T-shirt I had on was too warm. More importantly, it was going to leave me with sun-tan marks that would be visible when I switched to the slightly more revealing tops that I have finally gotten used to wearing in Spain, after living most of my life more covered up in New England. When I returned home, I could see that the two-hour bike ride in the sun, broken only by a few minutes for an agua con gas and half a tostada, had defintely left their mark.

Later in the day, before we set out to walk the twenty minutes to the local shopping mall, I scoured my underwear and lesser-wear drawers to find something in which I could open myself up to the sun and try to blur the lines. Of course, I also needed to grab a light cover-up to push into my bag. While I have finally learned to stride almost nonchalantly through city streets dressed in clothing that is more revealing than my nightgown, that does not mean I can be comfortable wearing the same thing when walking through an indoor shopping mall, where I might actually make eye contact with another person.

We prepared for another bike ride and sunning expedition on Saturday, but rain had descended through the night, leaving cars and our balcony windows streaming with the muddy splotches of Sahara sand that blows over the Mediterranean periodically. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees F. and a startlingly heavy wind was blowing things this way and that. No bike ride that day, but we did make a cold trip to the car wash.

This Sunday morning in Spain was pleasant again. Our wind gauge (the palm tree across the street, viewable from our second-floor apartment) showed no movement. I put on a moderate sunning-shirt, we took the bikes down again, and headed in the opposite direction from Friday, toward the resort Urbanizacion southwest of the "old town" where we live. We stopped for a drink and tapa mid-way beyond the old Castillo and the Urba, but as we lounged and watched the passers-by on the paseo, it began to rain. We scurried out and drove the three mikes back to the apartment in record time. This time I was glad for the warm cover-up I had stashed in my backpack, an ancient favorite Green Cotton original, from Denmark by way of Garnet Hill in Franconia, New Hampshire.

It is too early to pack away the spring clothing. But not too early to bring down that last box of summer clothing from the high shelf of the wardrobe.

Road Signs

Well, I haven't done very well with my intention to spend the winter learning to drive in Spain. In fact, I barely cracked the book that I finally bought from an autoescuela until this past week. When I did open the book, I kept getting bogged down in Chapter 1, which has colored pictures of almost 40 different vehicles, from a bicicleta to a tren turístico. The idea here, I gather, is to be able to recognize the ones that require a driver's license to drive (not needed for the bicicleta, and I'm not about to try for the special license for the tren turístico or tractor de obras, either).

So this week I finally just skipped over to Chapter 2 (of 18): Road Signs. This is the first mention of anything that really has anything to do with how to drive, or how not to, as the case may be. I have noticed, of course, that some road signs follow international norms of which I am already aware, but others are not very familiar to me. And I'm looking forward to reading an explanation of what one is supposed to do when navigating through the hundreds of roundabouts (rotondas) that Spanish roads use to manage many intersections. They look like the rotaries that are common in Massachusetts, but the Spanish drivers don't seem to get in and out of them in quite the same way that Massachusetts drivers do.

I haven't come across the rule of the rotonda yet. But the first thing I found in the Road Signs chapter was the five different types of road signs. They are:

1. Signals and orders from Traffic Agents (these are humans)
2. "Circumstantial" signs that modify normal traffic signs (as for road work or emergencies)
3. Traffic lights (of the red, yellow, and green variety)
4. So-called "vertical" signs, the metal ones that are anchored vertically to the ground on the right or left side of the road
5. Signals painted on the pavement

Now I've spoiled the surprise by giving them to you already in priority order, but the first, mind you, the first sentence in the chapter says, "When the signals are contradictory, you must obey the sign that has the highest authority."

I'm sure I would have guessed that special "circumstantial" signs took precedence over normal road signs, and that if a human traffic agent told me to do something, I'd better follow that order rather than whatever any inanimate sign said. But all the examples show situations in which the lower three priorities of signs are contradictory! Now why would someone deliberately erect a traffic light, or a vertical metal sign, or paint signals on pavement and make them contradictory with what was already there?

And why, I wondered as I got deeper and deeper into contradictory road signs and what to do when I encounter them, did the book go into such detail about the proper course of action when it had not yet even introduced me to the meaning of all the individual signs themselves?

I'm only on page 38.

Spain's New Christians

I'm not a theologian, but I would guess that it's correct to say that Christianity started 2009 years ago on Easter, when the Resurrection of a Jewish man named Jesus caused some Jews to revise their faith. They became the first "New Christians."

Spain had its own New Christians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were moriscos, Moors, who were forced to abandon their faith and officially become cristianos nuevos, New Christians. After years of fighting, the Moors had been finally defeated by the forces of los reyes católicos, Ferdinand and Isabella, at Granada in 1492. Many fled, but those who remained in Spain converted, at least on the surface.

Ironically in this week preceding Easter, Semana Santa to the Spaniards, I read that it was the 400th anniversary of the expulsion of the moriscos from Spain. In 1609, on April 9, Felipe III signed the decree authorizing the greatest exodus Spain has ever known. About 300,000 inhabitants were sent out of their country, which figures to be 4.3% of the population of the time. The same percentage today of Spain's nearly 46 million inhabitants would put the number at approximately 2 million people.

Spanish historians are reexamining the record of this great expulsion and note that on the same day Felipe signed a truce with Dutch Protestants in the Twelve Year War. They say that Felipe was telling the world that even though Spain had compromised with the heretical Protestants, it was still Catholic enough to deport more than four percent of its own population.

Today, with modern immigration, there are once again Muslims in Spain, and many of the customs of the early moriscos are alive in the country. One of the ways that 17th-century Christians were able to detect moriscos was through their bathing habits: Moriscos washed themselves once a week, on Friday, while Christians of the time limited their baths to twice a year. Other morisco habits were cooking with olive oil instead of animal fats, eating many vegetables and fruits, using perfume, and dressing in colorful clothing. In such ways does the culture of the vanquished live on.

Already a hundred years after the expulsion, in the eighteenth century, the deportation was regretted and called "the ruination of Spain." Today Spain is preserving its Moorish culture with pride. The 400th anniversary of the expulsion was noted, but not celebrated.

My Three Countries

It's been anything but a quiet week in this place so far across the Pond from Lake Wobegon. It's been a week of politics, intervention, mediation, and reconciliation.

President Obama went to London on Monday for the G20 meeting, reportedly wanting more stimulus money from European countries for the economic crisis. Germany and France, on the other hand, wanted stricter financial controls. Who did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown call in to mediate between Merkel, Sarkozy, and President Obama? None other than José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, president of Spain.

Further into the week, many of the same leaders moved to Baden-Baden to celebrate the 60th anniversary of NATO. This time the disunity was between Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was aspiring to become the next General Secretary of NATO, and Turkey, which was upset over Fogh Rasmussen's handling of the Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper in 2005. Who mediated the conflict this time? President Barack Obama.

Fogh Rasmussen was successful in his bid to become head of NATO. He spent today, Sunday, in audience with the Queen of Denmark, resigning his post and passing the Danish government over to Lars Løkke Rasmussen (no relation except political) and will appear in Istanbul tomorrow to speak to the Turks. Then he'll move on to Prague for the European Union meeting, where President Obama spoke today to huge crowds about nuclear non-proliferation.

Reportedly, Obama and Zapatero held a 45-minute private meeting in Prague today.

It's been a week of diplomacy, in which the heads of state of all three of the countries which in some sense are "home" to me played major roles. And they each did a creditable job and took actions of which I approve.

That's a first.

It's 8:03 A.M. Do you know what time it is?

For the last several months at 8:03 A.M. every morning, a clock has sounded with the words, "It's eight oh three A.M.; it's eight oh three A.M.; it's eight oh three A.M.," and on and on for an entire minute, unless I get to the Off switch to shut out the mechanical voice.

The clock is the one on my pedometer, a freebie trinket from the National Library of Medicine booth at a trade show many years ago, which has proved very useful in measuring my steps while walking and even biking. But several months ago, I managed to set the alarm, unintentionally, and even though I (finally) located the printed instructions, I have not been able to undo it.

This Sunday morning in Spain I was not disturbed until 9:03 A.M. That's because this morning, Spain--and all of Europe--finally switched clocks to Daylight Saving Time, or Summer Time, as it is known here. Spring forward, fall back. What had been 8:03 now is called 9:03--except by my pedometer clock.

The last three weeks have wreaked havoc on my sensibilities. I am used to the U.S. east coast being six hours later than we are here in Spain. It's an easy switch. Around the time of my lunch at 2:00 P.M. here, people are going to work at home. When I settle down for the evening news, they are beginning to think about their lunch. And if I am still sitting at my computer at 10:30 P.M., they are just closing up work for the day.

But since the U.S. changed its clocks on March 8, and we didn't change until last night, we were, temporarily, only five hours ahead of U.S. time. I was late for my usual telephone call to my mother on Saturday afternoon. I failed to check my email at a computer in Connecticut before the office opened at 8:30 A.M.--though I only had to wait up until 9:30 P.M. my time (instead of 10:30) to check the end-of-day messages at that office. And my New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Jim Lehrer Newshour, and Katie Couric emails have been coming in at hours that I did not expect. In short, I have been totally disoriented.

Since they both do shift time twice each year, spring and fall, I have never been able to understand why the U.S. and Europe don't change on the same date. Now, after an afternoon of research--made even shorter by that hour I lost this morning--I still don't know why. But I do know that the changes are embedded in their respective laws. Before 1996, countries in Europe changed to summer or winter time, as the case was, at different times. The European Union standardized the time switch, and since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. The United States, which first adopted DST during WWI, then abandoned it until WWII, started regular observances with the Uniform Time Act of 1966. There have been periodic revisions since then, and starting in 2007, Daylight Saving Time begins the second Sunday morning in March, and extends until the first Sunday morning in November.

I figure I have seven months before my time is out of synch again. And I hope that by that time I will have figured out how to change the talking mechanical voice on my pedometer.

Lost in Translation?

We've joined a weekly walking group of mostly Brits, and have spent the past few Wednesdays hiking for an hour or so at interesting locations in the Roquetas environs and then having a lunch of a tapa or two at a bar near our excursion site. Last Wednesday's walk took us to the Cabo de Gata nature park east of Almería. Although la gata means "cat" in Spanish, Cabo de Gata has nothing to do with cats; it seems in this case to be a variation of the word "agate," which was once found among the stones in the beach area.

The car trip to Cabo de Gata took most of an hour, and the walk down a sandy path along the marsh to the flamingo look-out and abandoned country church took two hours, so we were quite hungry when we found our way to a seaside bar and restaurant. I overheard part of a conversation at the next table. As waiters are wont to do in southern Spain, especially when descended upon by a group of 22 English speakers, this one tried valiantly to respond to one walker's question about the preparation of the fish he was ordering.

"Is it done in batter?" was the question.

"Oh, no! No butter!" responded the waiter, horrified. "Olive oil."

"Yes, but is it covered in batter?" came the question again.

"No, no butter," repeated the waiter patiently.

Was this a misunderstanding in the making?

I have no idea whether this hiker wanted his fish in batter or not, nor whether he got it in batter or not. We can be sure he didn't get it in butter.

My own boquerones (anchovies) were covered with a delicious light batter and fried lightly in olive oil.

Some Favorite Tapas

A friend's birthday party this week was a celebration not only of his 75 years, but of the leisurely way of eating in Spain. Tapas--small portions of food served with drinks--are well-known throughout the world now. There are hundreds of varieties of tapas, in which small portions of fish, meat, vegetables, and potatoes are combined in interesting and tasteful ways, and served in distinctive individual tapas dishes along with an alcoholic beverage. The days of a no-charge tapa accompanying your order of wine or beer are mostly gone, but all bars still display a tray of eight or ten, or more, different tapas selections throughout the day. You specify your choice and they ladle it into a distinctive individual tapas dish, pop it in the microwave, and then serve it to you with just a fork and a slice or two of a good baguette--all for a single euro. If you are still hungry after a tapa, you simply have a second one. Foreigners, especially, often eat lunch this way.

Our birthday party followed the tapas tradition but served raciones, which are larger platters of the same types of food that make tapas. A group of Spaniards might order a racion for the table and each just dip into that plate with their own fork. Our group of 20 were seated at regular dining tables, each with a formal place setting of knife, fork, and dinner plate, and the plates of raciones were passed along the table so all could help themselves.

Our progressive tapas dinner began with ensalada mixta, mixed green salad, with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, peppers, and olives. An ensalada mixta often serves as a first course to a normal Spanish dinner; you dress it yourself from the olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper condiment set that invariably accompanies it. This was slightly different in that pieces of Spanish tortilla were served along side. I've previously written about my love affair with Spanish tortillas, and I enjoyed this little extra touch.

Just as I expected the main course to be served, the next racion appeared. And then another and another, in successive installments. As soon as we had passed and finished one plate, and washed it down with copious copas (glasses) of vino tinto (red wine) and agua (water), out would come another dish. In addition to salad and tortilla, we ate boquerones fritos, delicious fried anchovies, with papas fritas (French fries); patatas pobres, thinly sliced potatoes, slow fried with garlic; habas (lima beans) with bits of jamón serrano; a montadito, literally, something mounted on bread--this was a miniature sandwich of pork tenderloin), and pieces of pollo, chicken, marinated in something wonderful. I am sure there were a couple other courses, but this was several days ago and there were those copious copas. After three hours at the table with good food, good wine, and good conversation, there was a delicious birthday cake.

Spring Flowers

A few weeks ago I passed by an open garden gate and was surprised to see a courtyard full of blooming daffodils. Spring flowers that were traditional in my North American growing up years--primarily daffodils and tulips--are rare here, as the winters along the southern costas of Spain do not get cold enough to properly "set" the bulbs. As a matter of fact, I was surprised to see flower bulbs on sale at all the first year I was in Spain. So the sight of a mass of 50 or more daffodils that must have been carefully and individually planted was an unexpected early spring pleasure.

There are spring flowers in Spain, just as there are distinct seasons. The flowers are just different from the ones I was used to while growing up in Ohio or living in New England. First we have the almond blossoms, which I almost missed this year, being away in the States until mid-February. But drives across country and walks along hilly trails in the past few weeks have always presented gorgeous profusions of yellow wildflowers. There are several different kinds, all of which are unknown to me, including one which looks almost like a dandelion, and another like a buttercup, but they aren't either of those. Today, while biking through Roquetas on yet another new bike path along the Mediterranean, I stopped in my tracks when I saw this display of naturalized yellow miniature blooms popping their heads up over the blades of grass in a small park--grass itself being a rather unusual form of greenery in this area.

My favorite spring plants, though, are the low borders of green succulents along the sea promenade, that suddenly spring forth with round magenta flowers each March. We watched one of the promenades being built, and the green succulent leaves served as a ground cover during the winter. Only a few flowers blossomed the first year, but each spring since, there have been more and more, so now it sometimes appears as a magenta carpet over the entire area. Danish friends told me these are middagsblomster, and a German friend verified that in Germany they are mittagsblume. But I've never been able to find either the Spanish or the English name. Now, after leafing unsuccessfully through two Spanish flower books with pictures, I found a lovely multilingual site on the Internet, Biopix. Clicking the Spanish flag produces two imaginative names for this plant: diente de dragón (dragon's tooth) and flor de cuchillo (knife plant). The individual succulent leaves could certainly be regarded as the long teeth of a dragon. But the British flag reveals two surprising and unjust names, I think: giant pigface, and Hottentot fig. The Latin name is neutral: Carpobrotus acinaciformis. I think I would prefer to remember dientes de dragón.

The Windmills of Spain

Don Quixote has made the old windmills of Spain famous for the past four hundred years, but new Spanish windmills are now achieving a prominence of their own. Spain's national newspaper, El País, reported this week that on March 5 windmills generated enough energy to meet 29% of the demand for electricity at 11:10 in the morning, and more than 40% of the demand during several of the early morning hours.

Windmill farms with a hundred or more mills are a common site when driving across the plains, though usually only a small portion of the mills are operating. Indeed, the country's windmill network was only functioning at 74.5% capacity when the March 5 record was established.

The bigger news that El País reported, however, was that in the months of January and February, Spain exceeded the goal of generating 30% of its electricity with the renewable sources of wind and water. In 2001 the European Union established a target for its member countries to satisfy 29.4% of their electrical needs with renewable sources by 2010. Though Spain experienced favorable conditions of wind and rain in the first two months of this year--as well as diminished electricity demand due to the economic crisis--it appears to be well on its way to maintaining its place as one of the leaders of renewable energy production and management. According to El País, only 10% of electricity in the U.S. is generated by renewable sources, and in the UK, it's less than 5%.

First Bike Ride of the Season

This second March Sunday morning in Spain was perfect for bike riding, and I have a new bicycle. Petty theft happens here, especially when you get careless. Someone climbed over the four-foot wall surrounding our terrace in December, picked up two bicycles that we had forgotten to lock that night, and somehow passed them over to the other side. Since then I have been without a bike.

This time I bought a folding bike. We are no longer living in the house with the terrace and four-foot wall, but now on the second floor of an apartment building with a small four-person elevator. The collapsible bike, when folded up, can be carried into the elevator for trips down from and up to the always-locked apartment. With some difficulty.

Even before we reached the tile-paved promenade at the foot of the half-mile paseo that connects the main street on which we live to the Mediterranean, I knew I was going to be too warm in my turtle-neck and long jeans. I was, but there was too much life going on to turn back and change, or even to run back and pick up the camera we forgot. At 11:00 AM, the promenade was full of people of all ages enjoying the sun and fresh air of a spring Sunday. A bike path runs along the people promenade, and theoretically all bikes follow the bike path and all people on foot are on the wider pavement closer to the Sea. But there are many sorts of wheeled vehicles to contend with. At any point in time, regardless of where you are walking or riding, you may meet:

• tricycles
• roller skates
• children's bikes with training wheels
• wheelchairs, pushed not by the occupant
• motorized scooters, driven by the occupant
• baby strollers, pushed by parent or grandparent
• double-wide baby strollers holding the large number of sets of twins in Spain
• sedately moving two-wheeled bikes, ridden by pensioners or those approaching that age
• racing bikes, usually controlled by young Spanish men passing you by at breathtaking speeds
• the occasional motorcycle
• a few cars and camping vans, making their way to the wide beach front between the promenade and the Sea

There were hundreds of people moving along, and when we got to the end of the tiled promenade, we and they continued on new bike and walking paths that had been built within the past year. We passed on wooden bridges over shallow marshes and through a natural park with a nice selection of grasses, shrubs, and palm trees. We stopped at one point for the most surprising pedestrians of all--at least 60 sheep making their way across the marsh, with a little help from a herdsman. All wore a small metal bell around the neck, each emitting a single soft tone that together produced an enchanting musical interlude.

We were headed to Aguadulce, a small village immediately to the north, perhaps seven or eight miles away. We stopped on the southern perimeter for our traditional snack of café con leche and tostada and a rest in the sun. Normally we would have continued all the way through Aguadulce, but I'm still getting used to the straight-across handlebars and the hand brakes on this bike, and I could also tell that I was feeling the effects of even this short ride in my legs, so we'll leave that for another day.

By the time we made our way back, the sheep were long gone.

Burying the Sardine

The first street parade I saw in Spain appeared without warning just below our living room balcony on a Sunday afternoon in spring five years ago. We sprang from the dinner table to watch colorful floats, marching bands, and young people in vibrant costumes parade down the main street of town. At the time we didn't have the slightest idea of why the procession included a large papier-mâché fish borne on the shoulders of four young men, but we came to believe it was a custom unique to Roquetas, which until 25 or 30 years ago was a small fishing village.

Since then, we have learned that this particular parade, Entierro de la Sardina, happens annually, on Sunday or Ash Wednesday, as the culmination of Carnaval, just before the beginning of Lent. There are parades like this in towns and cities all over Spain, and the fish is not unique to Roquetas. In fact, they carry a large fish--a sardine--in all the Entierro de la Sardina parades. This year I have done some research and discovered that they do, in fact, burn and bury the sardine each year at the conclusion of the parade. That would explain why it always looks a little different each year.

The funeral procession for the sardine has a spiritual significance. The sardine itself seems to represent sins and vices, the sense of abandon expressed in the festival--and it is true that the noise, dance, and some costumes rival those I have seen in Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. The cremation of the fish represents cleansing and liberation. The interment of the sardine, then, is a symbol of the burial of the past and subsequent rebirth of spirit--renewed, transformed and more forceful and powerful.