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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Europe Day

Today (May 9) is Europe Day, and we will celebrate this evening at the Concierto de Europa at the new Auditorio de la Diputación de Alicante (ADDA). Europe Day was established at the Milan Summit of European Union leaders in 1985 as a recognition of the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950. On that day, just five years after the end of World War II, Robert Schuman, the Foreign Minister of France, read a declaration asking France and its recent enemy, Germany, to pool their coal and steel production. "The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible."

What started as a limited economic measure has grown over the last 60 years to much more, resulting in economic, political, and social cooperation among 27 countries. The European Union is not and will not become a "united states of Europe," and it suffers from complaints of "too much regulation from Brussels." But it nevertheless offers a framework for revitalization and growth for millions of people from the intercambios (exchanges) of its diverse member states. And that makes this young Europe an exciting place to live.

Spanish Bureacracy and the Coffee Break

A friend sent this link to a short YouTube video about Spanish bureaucracy. It is hilarious and shows a situation that is only slightly exaggerated. My sole quibble with the film is that I have never seen a public functionary (or any other office worker, for that matter) enjoy a cup of coffee from a thermos at his desk. No, I wrote back, they would not drink coffee at the desk; they would leave the desk, disappear to the corner café, drink their coffee and perhaps enjoy a tostada, and then return to their office 30 minutes or so later.

And we proved it this week. It was time once again for Johannes to go to the local health clinic, the centro de salud, to get a renewal of a prescription. He dropped in at about 10:00 on Tuesday morning but came home later without the prescription. He had not gotten beyond the front door, he said, because the receptionist wasn't there--she was out on a coffee break. No sign saying she would be back in fifteen minutes, or 30. Nothing. But the other people waiting in the room reported she had gone out for desayuno, the light breakfast that many Spaniards customarily eat out, because they usually leave their house in the morning having had only coffee and/or juice).

Wednesday morning he tried again, a little later. Not enough later. She was still gone, or gone again. Again he came back with no prescription. I reminded him that the centro de salud opens at 8:30 or maybe 9:00, and it might be better if he got there earlier, rather than later.

Bingo. Thursday morning he was off at 8:30 and home again by 9:15. He had managed to catch the receptionist before she disappeared for coffee, and this time he had been lucky enough to get the prescription, not just for one month, but for the next three. So that little aggravation of planning a trip to the doctor's around someone else's breakfast can be postponed for another three months. Hopefully we will remember then that the time to go is 8:30.

The Royal Wedding

What country am I living in? You may well ask. This house down the street surprised me yesterday with this display in anticipation of the royal wedding. That's the event today uniting in marriage Kate Middleton and Prince William of England. Now, it's not surprsing that there was a flag at this house--the owner displays a flag every day of the year. But the owner of this casa is not one of the million Brits that live in Spain for all or much of each year. He's German. The man flies a different flag almost every day--Spanish, European, German, and many that I don't recognize. But usually only one. But now there are three! In honor of a royal wedding important to his neighbors, most of whom are British.

He's not the only one celebrating. At 11:00 I'm going to watch the festivities at the home of an English friend who gets all the local English TV channels, not just BBC World, as I do. But before I go, I'll take a look at our Danish TV, which starts coverage at 8:30 this morning. The town of Rojales is having a giant outdoor fair, with food and entertainment, to be opened by the mayor. The celebration is scheduled to go on until midnight. Bars and cafes have all announced special events throughout the day, and widescreen coverage, and they are surely open until midnight at least.

I understand that the Americas, too, are celebrating. Jon Stewart tells me that U.S. television, and specifically NBC, has gone over the top with its media coverage. The Friends of the Library in the town of Muskegon are sponsoring a very early morning breakfast to provide coverage and make money for the children's department, and my sister-in-law in Argentina informs me that she will be up at 4:00 AM her time to watch the festivities on television.

All the world, it seems, loves a wedding, and hope.

¡Valencia!

We had long wanted to go to Valencia city, the capital of the comunidad of Valencia, which is the comunidad of which Alicante province is a part. So when a couple we know from the U.S. were coming to Spain, having previously been to Madrid and Barcelona and with plans to proceed on this trip to Granada, it seemed the perfect place to meet before driving farther down the coast to Alicante and our little town of Algorfa. They came in on the recently-opened high-speed AVE train from Madrid, a journey of only one hour and forty minutes, and we drove by way of the inland route, and that only took two and a half hours.

The primary attraction of Valencia was the City of Arts and Sciences, a mammoth complex of art and science museums, the largest aquarium in Europe and the second largest in the world, and stunning architecture, some of which was visible from our hotel window. We only walked through the grounds and one of the buildings that first afternoon, and two days later when we returned to go to the Oceanográfic aquarium, we discovered that we hadn't seen the whole grounds at all. It reminded me of Disneyland in its size, and in its prices for the various components. We spent two hours wandering through the displays in several buildings of the aquarium, and somehow we managed to miss the restaurant...reason for another visit, for sure. You would need a week to see the whole City of Arts and Sciences.

We didn't have a week this time, and we also spent a day in downtown Valencia, touring the Cathedral, walking through the distinctive Central Market, enjoying a lunch of paella Valenciana (chicken and rabbit) and fish at an outdoor table near the Silk Exchange, and then later walking along the inner harbor, through a fabulous hotel, which I think was the Las Arenas, and then along the promenade.

We had a wonderful time with friends on our initial exploration, but Valencia is definitely worth a second visit, and on our next trip we will plan to spend more time.

Spring Clothing

Well, it has been almost a month of Sundays in Spain since I wrote here, and in the meantime Spring has arrived.

Spring came in on Saturday, March 26, when we were scheduled to drive into the country and have a special luncheon with friends at Rebate, a country estate with a restaurant and gourmet/organic food shop about 40 minutes away. What to wear? I finally settled on a turquoise blue and green floor-length cotton skirt slit up the sides, giving my legs a chance to get the sun they had been insulated from all winter. A cotton jacket, though, as well as a scarf wrap, because we didn't know yet whether we would sit outside or in. We settled finally on inside for luncheon and outside for coffee afterwards on the terrace, where we watched ducks in the pond and an ostrich wandering in the greenery.

The next day at the Sunday Zoco market I bared more leg, donning beige 3/4 length pants (piratas, here) and sandals, which I also wore to the brand new Alicante air terminal. This third largest airport in Spain had opened just four days earlier after six weeks of beta testing. We had not volunteered as beta passengers, but we did want to know how to get to the new terminal, where to park, and what facilities there were there before we had to arrive for a flight, or pick someone up, the first time. I was warm enough in my piratas--even too warm sometimes in the terminal building--though I felt under-dressed in comparison to my regular traveling clothes. I really got too warm when we were trying to find the exit in the parking garage and could not see any down ramps--only up ramps...But that's a story for another time, and it's exactly why we wanted to check it out before we needed it.

Monday was another mid-day luncheon for a friend's birthday, and I went even farther: I wore an above-the-knee brown and orange-colored summer skirt and sleeveless orange blouse. We sat inside for lunch but I enjoyed the sun on my upper arms while we were walking to the restaurant and standing and talking afterwards.

Later that last week in March I went on my first bike ride of the season, wearing piratas again and a short-sleeved cotton top, and carrying a long-sleeved top that I never put on. We were out for about four hours with some of our new American friends, biking first to Benijófar for coffee and scones and then to a campground resort in Guardamar for tinto de verano, red wine thinned with gaseosa, over ice, and lots of conversation. When I got home and undressed that evening, it was clear that I had forgotten about the strength of the sun, for I was red around the neckline of my top, and on my outer arms up to where the short sleeves had ended.

It's been sunny and warm almost every day since the end of March, and my red epidermis has turned brown. Some days I have conscientiously worn sleeveless tops in an effort to get my upper arms to match my lower arms in color. Hasn't happened yet--I may have to give up and just lie face up and arms out in an awkward position on the terrace for a couple hours. And I've been too busy to put away winter clothing and bring out the real light summer clothing, so getting dressed in the morning, and getting dressed all over again later for the afternoon or for the evening is an adventure and challenge. Friday night I put on long white slacks and a sleeveless/long-sleeved sweater set to go to an evening event at 8:00. But I added my winter white long wool cape against the evening breeze at the last minute, and I used it. And though I sat outside at the Zoco market for a bratwurst and beer this afternoon at 1:30, I was almost ready to turn on the gas in the fireplace while watching TV this evening at 8:00. It's still changeable spring weather here on Spain's Costa Blanca.

A Special Concert

This is the new auditorium of the province of Alicante. It opened to the public today, and we were there.

No, we did not go to the special invitation-only assemblage of dignitaries last evening, but we were there for the first concert open to the public. It was a "family concert," starting at 12:00 noon on this Sunday in Spain, no tickets necessary. Expecting a long line, we arrived at 10:45 AM. We were not the first, but there were not many people standing in groups around the outside of the building. The parking attendants told us that doors would not open until 11:30, so we went across the street for a café con leche and media tostada con atún y tomate, but we had a front window view and in only 20 minutes we high-tailed it back across the street to find out place in the line that was forming.

A half hour later, the line started moving, and we made our way inside. The Alicante Symphony Orchestra played "El Sueño de Eros," by Oscar Esplá, originally an alicantino, then Mahler's 3rd Symphony, Dream of a Summer Morning, "That Which Love Tells Me." After the intermission, during which I toured the building, there came three Spanish pieces, and then three encores, one of which was vocal. Plus a charming speech by the director, Joan Iborra, congratulating Alicante on the achievement of this cultural icon. And lots of applause.

There is a video on YouTube that shows and explains (in Spanish) the ingenious logo of the auditorium, only part of which you can see in the photo at the top of this piece.  It's a clever musical play on the initials ADDA, Auditorio de la Diputación de Alicante.

It's a wonderful experience to be a small part of the inauguration of a cultural monument.

American Coffee and Old Memories

Until this week I could count the number of Americans I know living on the Costa Blanca on one hand. Now I need two.

It did not happen overnight. But one person knows another person, and that one knows someone else... So when I got an email inviting me to "American coffee" in Algorfa a couple weeks ago, I said, "Sure."  As the email discussion went on, it became clear that non-American spouses were also welcome, so both Johannes and I headed out last Wednesday to our favorite café bar on the Algorfa town plaza, Badulake. It was a bit cold, so instead of seating ourselves at a table on the plaza at 10:30, we ventured inside.

We were the last to arrive. It took no time at all for the others to greet us (I guess we just look American) and we all settled in at two round tables and ordered café con leche--though I heard one request for an américano--and some of us decided this was a good excuse to indulge in a tostada.

Conversation never stopped for the next two hours, and it was probably the first time I have been in a bar in Spain where those in my group were making more noise than those at the other tables. We were an American woman married with a Spaniard, an American man married with a Costa Rican woman who had lived in the U.S. for many years, an American man married with a German wife who had also lived in the U.S. for some years but in Germany more, and this American woman married to a Dane who had lived in the U.S. for many years. We all had in common the experience of being married to "foreigners," and of living in at least one country as a foreigner.

And the Americans among us shared certain of those almost indefinable memories and associations from our growing up years in the U.S. in the 1950s, ´60s, and ´70s. So even though we all had to be told by the proprietor of the bar that "Badulake" is the 24-hour store in the TV show "los Simpsons," we all were able to compare notes on how we experienced Yosemite on childhood trips in various years, we were able to name the actors playing Ben Cartwright´s sons in "Bonanza," and we all could laugh and appreciate Jack Benny´s solution to aging.

Such moments come seldom and are special.

Happy Father's Day

Today (Saturday) is Father´s Day in Spain. I was prepared. I saw ads in the grocery circulars and also in the promotions from the traditional father-like commercial stores...electronics, gardening supplies, DIY. I even noticed a sign last Thursday, St. Patrick's Day, in my favorite grocery store that said it would be closed on the 19th of March.

Father's Day has always snuck up on me in Spain. First, I'm conditioned to not really expect it until June, after Mother's Day has made its appearance. I also expect it on a Sunday, but it has not come on a Sunday in Spain within recent memory. It wasn't until last year that I began to understand why Father's Day always seemed to come on a different day.

In Spain, Father's Day is celebrated on the saint day for St. Joseph. St. Joseph's Day has been observed in many countries on March 19 since the Middle Ages. The day changes, but the date does not. It's always March 19.

Why is Father's Day observed on the day of St. Joseph? That's the real question. St. Joseph, of course, was the husband of the Virgin Mary. I think that the Spanish coincidence of Father's Day with St. Joseph brings a certain nuance to the idea of fatherhood.

On this day, I'm remembering my own father, Robert James Nicklet, and sending thanks to another good father I have known (Ron) and best wishes to a father-soon-to-be (Tim).

¡Choque!

Now that I've had a cataract operation on both eyes, my vision has improved so much that I only need to wear glasses inside the house to see subtitles on the television screen, and outside the house to see long distances and take advantage of their UV-protection and automatic darkening in sunlight. Last Tuesday morning was one in all-too-many cloudy days we had this week, so it was not terribly surprising that I managed to get myself outside the house and into the car for a trip to Ikea without my glasses. Four locked locks (garden gate, sunroom, front door iron grill, and the wooden front door itself) separated me from my glasses, so I just said, "I don't think I'll need them today," and decided I would be a passenger for the day.

Since I don't drive without glasses, I was not the one driving when we stopped quickly in a rotary at a crossing for the brand new tram running between the center of Murcia city and the outskirts of town where the commercial superstores are located--though I was the one who noticed that the light had turned red and a tram was approaching. Unfortunately the driver of the car behind us did not see the red light, nor the tram, and he did not stop. Smack! A collision, or choque.

This was our first choque in Spain. Spanish law allows those involved in minor accidents to fill out an accident report and file it with the insurance companies if both parties can agree amicably to the circumstances. Since the other car had plowed into our right rear fender with his left front fender, and both cars were still operable (though our tire was fast deflating) it seemed minor. But we did need to communicate.

The other driver spoke no Spanish, and no English. But we were lucky: he spoke Swedish. Native speakers of Danish can usually understand Swedish, and Swedes can understand Danish. This non-native speaker of Danish and non-speaker of Swedish had a little more trouble, especially when the Swede assumed that I understood everything and could carry on a conversation. I was in no mood to carry on a conversation, actually, and this one seemed to go on for ages. It took an hour and a quarter to exchange names and contact information, take pictures of the damage and license plates of both cars, find the insurance papers (the other driver was only borrowing the car he was driving), call our insurance company to report and verify procedure, fill out the papers (in Spanish), translate them to the satisfaction of the other driver, and get signatures. We parted amicably, though the other driver drove off and we still had a tire to change.

So now we are driving around--at no more than 80 kilometers per hour--on a little donut spare tire until Tuesday, when we meet the insurance adjuster at a car repair shop nearby and get delivery of a free loaner for however long it takes to fix the damage. If it had not been so clear that we were not at fault, we could have been liable for a 250€ deductible, but our insurance company has already told us that we don't need to worry about that. Getting a fully operating car again can't come too soon for me. Even though Spain lowered the maximum speed limit from 120 to 110 last week in a fuel economy measure, 80 kph is very poky indeed when driving along a motorway. In fact, it's almost dangerous. If you don't have blinking lights on, you might even get rear-ended.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies I Ever Made

Long-time readers of Sundays in Spain know that I sometimes pack chocolate chips in my suitcase when returning from the U.S., since the only small bits of chocolate resembling Nestle chocolate chips that I can purchase here--and with great difficulty--are miniatures and way too small to make authentic chocolate chip cookies. I didn't pack any this year when I came back in January (and for the first time, my bags weren't inspected by the TSA--perhaps they had always been attracted by the smell of chocolate).

So when I walked into my nearby Mercadona grocery store this week and saw the sign ¡Novedad! Gotas de Chocolate I almost ran through the store to find them, hoping against hope that they had imported some real chocolate chips.

They hadn't, but it appeared that they had made their own under their Hacendado brand. Gotas de Chocolate "Para Fundir" (chocolate drops "for melting"), it said on a light tan box the size of a 4-inch high 3x5 card. Pictured on one side were all sorts of Sugerencias (suggestions): a chocolate-dripped bundt cake, chocolate sauce melting over ice cream, chocolate drops on a cupcake, chocolate-dipped strawberries, a cup of hot chocolate, and a stack of eight little cakes that looked for all the world like real American chocolate chip cookies. On the other side of the box, life-sized chips of chocolate that looked like the real thing cascaded into a pool of melted chocolate. Both ends of the box showed diagrams and described in text how to melt the novel gotas inside (baño Maria, microwave, or in a cup of hot milk) and the bottom of the box listed the ingredients and carried the essential nutritional information for the 250 grams of cacao and sugar.

I probably could have found the original Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe on the Internet, but I had recently had a gourmet discussion by email with a very good friend, which started with tapas and ended with her sending me a recipe for oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies that she had copied from a Quaker Oats booklet. I followed the recipe as near as I could. But was my azucar moreno the right brown sugar? Why did the one cup of butter and the sugar never really get "light and fluffy"? And how was I ever going to get three cups of oats blended into the already stiff dough?

Well, the cookies turned out O.K.  The chocolate chips looked just like the ones that come out of the golden yellow and brown Nestle bag, and I measured about 1 1/2 cups from the 250 grams. The cookies don't look like the traditional ones I made in my childhood--they are flatter, in spite of the fact that I used what I believe is the equivalent of cake flour instead of regular flour, and they are crispier--probably due to the very dense real butter (not margarine) I used. But they taste good, and Johannes says they are the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made. Of course, they are also the first ones I have made in years. But not the last.

On the other hand, Quaker Oats has at least two chocolate-oatmeal recipes on its website that sound good.

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies (credit to Quaker Oats and a long friendship)
1 cup butter or margarine
1 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups uncooked quick or regular oats
1 cup chocolate chips

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy; blend in eggs and vanilla. Add combined dry ingredients except oats and chocolate; mix well. Stir in oats and chocolate. Drop onto greased cookie sheet by rounded teaspoonfuls. Bake in preheated 350 degree F oven for 10-12 minutes.
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My cookies would have floated off the baking sheet if I had greased it in addition to the cup of butter in the dough. I used baking paper--something else I never did when I was making these cookies when I was a child. Baking paper makes it a lot easier to clean the pans afterwards, too.

Almond Trees in Bloom

Photo by Johannes Bjorner 2009

In Spain the almond trees trees usually blossom in the month of February, and I couldn't let February go by without a photo of this beautiful sight. The picture to the left is from Almeria and is two years old, but earlier this month we took a day trip to the Jalon Valley and viewed beautiful fields of almonds there. Then last week we took the back road up to our village of Algorfa and discovered a whole field of blossoming almonds almost on our doorstep.

One of the prettiest pictures I have seen this year is this one that appeared in Spaniaposten, a free Norwegian newspaper that provides current news and geographic, historical, and cultural stories about life on the Costa Blanca. In addition to several other nice images available on page 22 in the PDF of the printed newspaper, Spaniaposten also had a nice informative story about almonds.

Nuts are called frutos secos in Spanish, dried fruits, and the almond is indeed dry, but botanically speaking, it is not a nut. It is the seed of the almond tree, which grows inside a hard and inedible shell. Spain exports lots of almonds but keeps enough in the country so that they are a frequent aperitif or snack in natural, toasted, salted, and/or fried forms. as well as being used in cooking. We buy toasted almonds almost every week at the Sunday market to add to my breakfast oatmeal--4 euros for a quarter kilo. Almonds are high in protein and fiber and are low in fat and carbohydrates. They also contain vitamin E, which supports the immune system, and magnesium, which is good for the heart and blood pressure. The almond tree came to Spain with the Moors from North Africa and is also native to Iran, northwest Saudi Arabia, and western Jordan, Lebanon, west Syria and southern Turkey. The Norwegian paper also pointed out that almonds are an essential ingredient in marzipan and kransekake, a festive confection throughout Scandinavia.

Internet Piracy and Film in Spain

I have been seeing increasing references in Spanish newspapers to something called La Ley Sinde, and when I read that Álex de la Iglesia, president of the Spanish academy of cinema, had resigned his post in opposition to the law, I finally decided to spend some time figuring out what was going on.

I knew that the law had something to do with Internet piracy, and I assumed that it was strengthening sanctions against the practice of unauthorized (i.e., unpaid) downloading of copyrighted music and film works. What I didn't know was just how inbred in Spanish society the practice of downloading from the Internet was.

A year ago, an article in the Los Angeles Times ("In Spain, Internet Piracy is Part of the Culture") provoked heated controversy among Spanish Internet users who couldn't understand what the fuss was about. The article quoted two middle-aged individuals who routinely download a couple movies a week from the Internet. They didn't feel like pirates, and they weren't, strictly speaking, for in Spain, such downloading is not illegal as long as it is not done for profit.

I didn't know that. Apparently that means that it is not illegal to buy the DVDs of English-language films on sale by street vendors along the beach promenade or at the Sunday market--though it is illegal for the vendors to sell them. So may I rest easier about the copy of The King's Speech loaned to us by some neighbors a week ago that I have enjoyed immensely--twice--all the while feeling guilty because I suspect that it was purchased as a pirated copy for only a couple euros at most and has now provided an evening's entertainment to at least five families?

I learned more from that article and others that I researched. Reportedly there were 12,000 video stores in Spain when I first came here in 2003, but by the end of 2008, there were only 3,000. That rings true--there was just a single video rental store in Roquetas, where we first lived, and since we moved to the Torrevieja area we have yet to find one. There are also few cinema houses. There was one in Roquetas, which showed films in their original version (i.e., not dubbed into Spanish) for a time, but it soon abandoned that practice for lack of an audience--we were usually the only two customers on a Sunday afternoon. I guess most people were just downloading the original version from the Internet instead of paying 6 or 8 euros per person for the cinema version.

Even more surprising to me was that Apple's iTunes website apparently doesn't sell movies or television shows in Spain, though it does in Britain, France, and Germany--and when I read that, I finally realized why I had had so much trouble registering to use iTunes in order to download a free iPhone app several months ago. And while illegal movie downloads grew from 132 million a year to 350 million between 2006 and 2008, DVD sales and rentals fell by 30%. Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Michael Lynton was quoted as saying that Spain was "on the brink" of no longer being a viable home entertainment market for Sony.

We are now beyond the brink, according to a recent article in El Pais, which asserts that for the fourth year in a row, Spain is expected to be on a U.S. Department of Commerce blacklist of countries with which U.S. firms should not engage in business involving intellectual property. This article appeared in the same issue reporting on the final passage of La Ley Sinde, which is named after Spain's minister of culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, who is also a screenwriter and film director. The law is still controversial, since some see it simply as buckling under to U.S. commercial interests and to those who refuse to recognize the "new marketing model" of the Internet. I see it differently, as I come from a tradition and make my living in a profession that acknowledges some monetary value for the work of writers, performers, and other creative artists. I think the law is rather mild anyway. As near as I can figure out, it creates a panel to hear cases against Internet sites allowing downloads and empowers a judge to close such sites. No provisions against the downloaders or the sellers of copies.

I still feel guilty about watching a copy of The King's Speech that may have been illegal, even though I did not break a Spanish law. I would have been happy to go into a store and rent an authorized copy of the original version. I would have been even happier to be able to see the film in a movie theater. But the problem remains that films in Spain are dubbed into Spanish. Can you imagine watching and listening to The King's Speech in Spanish?

A New Traveling Companion

We've had house guests for a week, good friends who we have known and loved for more years than we could imagine when we first met them the year after we got married more than four decades ago. That means we have taken them to some of the traditional sites in this part of the Costa Blanca: the palmeral of Elche and the Huerta del Cura, the discount shoe factory, and an all-day bus trip to the Jalón Valley to see the almond trees in blossom.

But they have returned to Denmark and now when we drive out for a morning or afternoon trip, it's just the two of us and our new traveling companion, the Spanish lady that lives inside the GPS system that we acquired at Christmas. Yes, we were probably the last people on our block to feel the need for an electronic gadget to tell us which way to drive, but we were exposed to this new toy when other visitors with us earlier last year brought theirs, and we saw the conveniences. Truth be told, I saw the value of shifting back-seat driver observations to an objective, anonymous, and infinitely patient persona that sits on the dashboard instead of the front-seat passenger side.

The first decision to make was, how big was our world? We could buy a GPS that covers the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), all of western Europe, all of Europe, north Africa, and parts of the Middle East. I didn't see any in the stores that promised coverage of North America, so we decided to limit our sights to where we may drive without a major trip across the Atlantic. I believe the one we bought covers all of Europe.

The second decision, however, was what language to use for directions. We first selected English, since we most often speak English in the car, but neither the primary driver nor I could understand what the woman was saying! Of course, she spoke British rather than American English--but we have come to understand many dialects of English English pretty well. But when she pronounced the names of the streets and roads, she gave them a British intonation, which all too frequently places the stress on the wrong syllable, and pronounces some consonants very differently from the Spanish name. Fine for communicating with other English people about the Spanish environment, but not for our non-English household.

So we switched her over to Spanish, and this has become an excellent opportunity for me to learn certain Spanish phrases that I may never otherwise have the opportunity to hear, as describing entering rotaries and taking an exit are not the sort of conversations that make compelling Spanish lessons. It provides especially good practice for imperative mood verbs (commands, or requests), which are formed by adding the "opposite" vowel to the root word instead of the normal indicative mood vowel. Entra (from the infinitive entrar, for example. means "he enters" the rotary, but entre tells you to enter it. In 20 meters, for example, entre en la rotonda y tome (not toma) la segunda a la derecha. And then, 19 meters farther down the road, entre en la rotonda, and gire a la derecha.

We marvel that the methodical and patient GPS lady always tells us to turn right out of the rotonda. Perhaps that's a holdover from the English version, where users may need to be reminded that one comes out of a roundabout on the right in Spain, not the left.

Crevillente on a Sunny Saturday

When I looked outside my bathroom window yesterday morning, there seemed to be snow on the mountains in the distance. Not surprising, since we had had two days of very cold and damp weather. But Saturday morning itself was bright and sunny, so we hopped in the car and drove toward the mountains to investigate.

But we never actually got to the mountains. Instead, we veered off to the town of Crevillente, 26 kilometers up the AP-7 highway from our neighborhood of Montebello. Whenever we drive home from our nearest city, Torrevieja, we drive west on the Crevillente road (or Crevillent, as it is properly named in the Valenciano dialect). But we had never been to the town for which our main highway is named, and today seemed like a good time to do so.

Crevillente paseo viewed from the mercado de abastos

We easily found the center of town and even a parking place on the main paseo, from where we walked up the hill toward what we thought was the church. It wasn't a church, we discovered when we got there, but instead the mercado de abastos, an indoor market, and a very well-equipped one. We walked through the stalls of fruit and vegetables, meats, fish, olives, cheeses, and bread and exchanged pleasantries with two of the women vendors. They directed us farther up the hill and to the right, to the church and town hall. Then we found a papeleria and bought some watercolor supplies, and the clerk there directed us to a large municipal park. Somewhere along the line we stopped, of course, for a cafe con leche and split a tostada con atun y tomate, in a small bar that would have been smoky before the no-smoking ban was put into effect this month, but which was a joy now.



It was a glorious Saturday morning in Crevillente. The weather was warm--though I was in a sweater instead of a coat, I really didn't need the long sleeves--at least when I was in the sun. Everyone was out walking, buying, having a drink and a bit of food in the smoke-free bars, or practicing choral music, as we heard from a room at the top of the mercado building. On the way back to the car a couple hours later, we passed a beautiful fern tree. Its leaves looked like the ferns that I used to see along the backroads in New Hampshire, but this was a tall tree, and it was the delicate yellow-green of a promising spring. I know we will have cold weather again, and I will need long sleeves and a jacket, but then I will remember this spring-like January day in Crevillente.

Smoke-free bars in Spain?

This Sunday morning, I am not in Spain, and therefore I cannot see whether the new law banning smoking in all enclosed public places--including bars, cafes, and restaurants--is having the sudden transformational effect that has been hoped for by some and lamented by others.

A 2006 law regulating smoking in public spaces was disappointingly ineffective in regards to cafeterias, bars, and restaurants. Larger establishments were permitted to create smoking areas within the otherwise smoke-free premises. Though they were supposed to have separate ventilation systems and be positioned so as not to require patrons to pass through the smoky area when entering and leaving, I have seen some clumsily constructed structures that failed miserably in containing the abundant smoke generated by the faithful. Worse, establishments of less than 100  square meters of public space were permitted to exempt themselves from the no-smoking policy, as long as the management posted a sign at the entrance saying that smoking was permitted. For five years now, almost every little bar that I have entered has posted a "Se permite fumar" sign on the front door.

The new law took effect on Sunday, January 2 so as not to suddenly interrupt anyone's Nochevieja revelries as they celebrated the new year and downed their good-luck grapes. My own New Year's Eve day was spent in already smoke-free airports and planes, but I got the first inclination of a change when I checked in to a hotel next to the airport the night before my early-morning flight. For the first time in Spain I was asked voluntarily by the desk attendant if I wanted a smokeless room (thirty percent of hotel rooms may be reserved for smokers).

Toward the end of 2010 I read in the newspaper that bars and restaurants were investing in outdoor heating devices to enable the use of terrace and sidewalk sitting in even the colder months of the year. I remember now my surprise that the back terrace area of Bistro Alex, the restaurant within walking distance of my house, had been transformed into a pleasantly warm dining area with awnings and multiple heaters when I was there a couple weeks ago. I wonder if movable awnings--whether down or up--mean that an area is not "enclosed" and therefore may be exempt from the smoking ban. Most of all, I look forward to returning to the always-crowded  Carrefour cafeteria where we frequently enjoy a cup of coffee after making our purchases, but usually have trouble finding a clear table. I had noticed not too long ago that there was double the amount of seating space, with better views, farther beyond where we usually sit. It was, however, a glassed-in area for smoking. By the time I get back to Spain, that room should be cleaned and opened and a more pleasant space to recuperate from shopping.

The unusual thing I have noticed in all my reading about the tough new anti-smoking law in Spain  is that no one is attacking people who smoke, or denying their right to do so. The focus is on making more pleasant and healthy areas for everyone when they are eating and drinking, two activities that are major social occasions in Spain. Smoking is still permitted on the streets, in open air (except around playgrounds, schools, and hospitals), and in private areas in Spain. And I expect to see even more sidewalk restaurants and bars than there already are.