Little Facts about Barcelona, 2007

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a Word document I created back when I was studying in Barcelona. I was there studying for just five months, but made some pretty interesting observations about seemingly insignificant but quite telling differences in lifestyles, cultures and languages...

Me in Barcelona, 19 years old

Now that I have been living in Spain for a more significant amount of time, I never seem to notice these small differences that seemed so big to me when I was just 19 years old. For those of you who have spent some time in Spain, you might just find this interesting.

Little Facts about Barcelona 2007

1. Old men walk with their hands held behind their backs.

2. Spaniards are OBSESSED with saving energy because utilities are so expensive and scarce.

3. Long showers don’t exist. If it’s longer than 8 minutes you’re American and ridiculous.

4. They are also obsessed with every single door in the house being closed at all times (and they also have a lot more doors).

5. Fat people do not exist here. Anyone overweight is over 65.

6. All the music played in stores (of any kind) is really terrible American 80’s and 90’s music. Celine Dion and Mariah Carey always top the list.

7. Everyone is stylish- but weird 80s stylish. Ankle tight jeans are very popular, along with high-heel knee-high boots, and tights or leggings.

8. The city smells pretty bad.

9. Everyone smokes cigarettes.

10. Siesta doesn’t really exist in the big city, but lots of shops and stores close for two hours from lunch (1:30-3:30).

11. They eat five times a day. Breakfast at 8am, snack at 11am, lunch 2pm (their big meal), snack 5pm, dinner 10pm.

12. You can get a bocadillo anywhere for pretty cheap and they’re always delicious!

13. A huge piece of French bread (baguette) costs $.50.

14. They can talk at 5million miles a second a still understand each other.

15. Public transportation is amazing. There’s always the metro, the bus, the train, or your own feet.

16. When you order a pop at a restaurant it comes in a can and a glass with no ice.

17. You can’t get tap water at a restaurant.

18. They don’t really drink water here… but you can get a 1 liter bottle of water at the grocery store for $0.30!!!

19. Mopeds are everywhere!

20. They take “public display of affection” to a whole new level.

21. Hanging out at someone’s house doesn’t happen. To spend time with friends you meet at a bar, restaurant or café.

22. All of their convenient shops end with “ia.” Panadería (bakery), Farmacía (pharmacy), Perfumería (Perfume and makeup shop), Peluquería (hair salon).

23. Milk and juice for drinking at home comes in cardboard boxes that you can keep warm for a long time.

24. Chocolate is everywhere! Every block there’s a bakery that sells tons of chocolate covered/filled croissants and goodies. Nummy!

25. Cell phone minutes are really expensive and can be paid for by contract or by pre-pay.

26. To be able to walk to the grocery store and back home after shopping, lots of people own bags similar to a rolling suitcase to carry their groceries in.

27. Dogs are everywhere, poop everywhere, and go without a leash- without a problem.

28. For an area to be considered a “park” here it just has to be a brown sandy/dusty area with a few benches.

29. The blinds are outside of the house and you open and close them with a cord inside the room.

30. They don’t drink tap water.

31. Chocolate is king here!

32. Clubs (discotecas) are open until the wee hours of the morning (7am, 9am, anyone?)

The simple serenity of background noises

After two years of working as a professional waiting room individual due to my job as a medical interpreter, I began to appreciate the delicate sounds of group background noise. I got insanely accustomed to the sounds of quiet whispers between family members, the gentle rustle of magazines and newspapers, the quiet shuffle of feet when a name was called...

With time and boredom, these sounds took on an an extreme relaxing effect for me. Suddenly any hush-hush waiting room became my nursery, and more than fifteen minutes in an over-cushioned, arm-rested chair would send my head bobbing.

It happens that now that a good nap of mine thrives on good group background noise. Listening to the distant murmur of my roommates talking down the hall in the kitchen, the neighbors clanking dishes in their kitchen across the patio, or the light clicking of my dad's fingers tapping my laptop on the couch in front of me send me into siesta bliss...

The funny things that come out of jobs, eh?

Hola, me llamo Modi.

It never fails.

"Hola, soy Molly." Hello, I'm Molly. Seems simple enough, yeah? It is only the statement I have said approximately 5.7 million times in the years I have spent living and traveling throughout this fabulous yet apparently hard of hearing country.

"Modi?"

"Molly."

"Como? Moni?"

"MoLLy!"

"Modi?"

If I do not give a flying fuck about the person who is insisting on calling me Modi/Moni/Morocco, at this point I say, "Si, Modi," brush it off my shoulder like any good rap star, and continue on with my evening (while, of course, simultaneously racking my brain to figure out why the Spanish cannot distinguish the difference between my pronunciation of L and D). If the person is even suspected of being pertinent to my future social life or work opportunities, this goes on for a while... until I remember my new found, mythical weapon that does not amuse me at all.

"Sabes... Molly Malone...?"

"Ahhh, claroooo!! Moli!"

Aaand there went my dignity out the window. Being compared to a fish-selling Irish legend chick accused of prostituting on the side. Would you like a happy ending with your trout? Sweet dude! The most unfortunate side effect? This is officially my nickname for some of Pelayo's family members. 

An... older POV

Last week I met a Spanish woman in her 80's, and I think she took the cake for the wisest woman I've met in quite a while.

Upon discovering I am American, she suddenly said, "I am going to tell you some things I noticed about your culture and your country a few years back." Now, as many of us travelers/expats might do, I smiled outwardly but inwardly cringed in anticipation of some stereotypical, ignorant, and close minded statement about my country that I am so accustomed to hearing.

I am happy to say this woman surprised the shit outta me. "Back in the 60's, I went to visit some friends of some friends in a military base in Morocco." (*Note that Spain in the 60's was living under a Catholic dictatorship, which left them in the dust in terms of modernity and technology.)

She continued, "The kitchen was full of plug ins. Full of them. They had one plug in for every electronic thing in the kitchen. And of course, they had an electric knife, a toaster, everything!" In Spain, kitchens tend to have one outlet which is used for all kitchen appliances. You finish, unplug one, and plug in another. I had never thought about the plug-in/appliance ratio until I talked with her.

"Then, in every bedroom on the base, every nightstand had a TV! Every bedroom!" At this time in Spain, you were pretty lucky to have a TV at all. "A little excessive, your culture."

Then came some simple difference in time schedules and eating habits. "Oof, the Americans eat such a heavy breakfast, a light lunch, and a big dinner. I just couldn't figure out how to get full. I can't drink more than a coffee for breakfast, I have to have a huge lunch and a light dinner. I've never been hungrier than I was on that base!" She giggled at the differences between eating habits, and found it quite silly that she had never been hungrier than the time she spent around a bunch of Americans.

And of course, the classic, "And the Americans, they were so tall!"

I have to say, we could all learn a lesson from this lady. It took an 80 year old woman to state her observations respectfully. She told me all of this without saying once that one place was better than the other. It sure would be nice if we could all be as respectful and observant as this lady.

Her closing thought, which I found just plain interesting, went like this:

"I am at an age in my life when I know what I like. I'm at an age when I can look back at my life and see the things I actually liked because I liked them, and the things I thought I liked when I only liked them because of society's expectations. Now I know what I like: going for strolls, making my own clothes, and reading. And that's what I do now."

English names made blatantly, and terribly, Spanish

Yhudit (Judith)

Estefania (Stephanie)

Just a few traveling tales

La isla de Lobos

The last month or so has been full of travels and adventures. I took an amazingly sunny and beach-filled long weekend to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands with Pelayo (due to my mother you should all know who he is by now), my parents and aunties paid me a visit and we trekked all over Northern Spain, and a German girl I met traveling three years ago in Scotland also came to check out Asturias for a few days.

The Canary Islands are always a surprise... all proceeding from volcanic eruptions, the terrain is rocky, dark, hilly, flat and sandy all at the same time. The islands are always invaded with sun-crisped English tourists (sun-burnt doesn't begin to cover the degree of skin damage acquired here by the funny-accented whiteys)... but with a five minute drive outside of the resort and karaoke bar strip you discover paradise that can only be described as volcano-licious.

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Familia!

And then I was lucky enough to have my parents and my aunties visit for a little over a week. Before I begin to hammer out what was our week of sight-seeing, I have to explain the meaning and importance of our family version of "the good book." On all of our family trips that add up to more than two people, someone from the fam goes to the highly useful public library (do you sometimes also forget that public libraries exist?) and lends/borrows (yes I'm an English teacher but still don't remember the different between these two words) the up and coming Rick Steve's book. On our trips, we follow this book as if we were jesus freaks following the bible. We walk, sit, eat, drink and enjoy things wherever the book tells us we have to. Why? Rick Steve is witty. Aaand somehow, he and his crew or writers find extremely interesting things about the city that the whole family can enjoy. Do I sound like a commercial? Yes. But why is this so important? When you travel in big groups the hardest thing is making a damn decision. If you just follow the good book, the trip ends up being enjoyable... but most importantly thought and fight-free.

"This is a reading by Charlie from the good book..."

During their time here, we I drove over 1,000 miles and sight-saw the shit outta Northern Spain. In the past we've always ended up with fun-sized European clown cars and suffered through our long drives... but lessons were learned and this time around the car was actually big enough for five people and five pieces of luggage. We also didn't go anywhere without a handy GPS, which was un-handily only in Spanish. So, not only did I spend the week translating in restaurants, shops, and any public place imaginable... I also spent the week saying "take a right, take a left, go through the rotunda and..."

Aaaalmost pouring cider

Their first days in Asturias were spent drinking cider in Gijon, over-eating in Oviedo and fighting the rain in Aviles. After a full evening of attempting to follow the GPS, we arrived in cloudy Santiago de Compostela and stayed put for a couple of days. Rainy mornings brought sunny afternoons and lots of photo taking with my dad's new camera.

Santiago de Compostela

Santiago is a unique place that attracts people from all over the world, not just simply for being a mysterious, ancient town, but for the famous Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James (obviously housed in this rockin' church). For more than 1,000 years, pilgrims have been walking to Santiago from wherever in Europe for whatever reason. They used to arrive smelly and sick, but now arrive with modern backpacks, cameras, and many new friends. No longer just a religious tradition, people will do the walk just to do it and say it was done! En fin, enchanted by pilgrim's tales, the cathedral's history, and our 3-star hotel for the price of a 2... we all fell in love with this city.

(Just last night I met an Asturian guy who swears that this Catholic pilgrimage was originally not a religious tradition at all, but in fact a pre-Catholic, Roman tradition as a walk to the "end of the world." Before the continent of America was found by Columbus, Spain and Portugal were nicknamed as the end of the world. Europeans believed that if they kept sailing past the Iberian Peninsula, they'd simply fall off the end of the world. Lets shout a HOORAY to the catholic church for, over and over again, changing history to suit them!)

Next on our tour of the green coast was a night in Ribadeo, a town bordering the states of Galicia and Asturias. A morning trip to the market to buy home-made cheese, ham, chorizo and freshly baked bread worked out perfectly for our rocky beach side picnic later in the day.

Our last stop while touring the green coast was in breathtaking Cudillero. I had never heard anyone speak of Cudillero before, it was a random stop chosen from my free "Asturias" tourism book that ended up being one of the best of the whole trip. A teeny, tiny little pueblo literally built into a hill, Cudillero was a stronghold back in the middle ages, when it spent quite a while fighting off invaders from the sea. Now a tourist trap kinda place in summer, a walk around this town drops your jaw and stays stuck in your memory forever.

The fam checking out the Foreign Languages department

To wrap up our Northern tour, we had lunch at my school. My family got the chance to meet my (shhh) favorite group of students- they were working as waiters that day- and my students had the chance to do their jobs in English. We had some good laughs, as my dad screwed up the pronunciation of a dish we were eating... instead of saying "I love the pisto" he said "I love the pito" which is a slang word for penis. That served as a great lesson Monday morning with my students= Making mistakes is the best way to learn! And, the most embarrassing mistakes are the most important ones, because you'll never forget!

Our last moments as a group were spent wandering the streets in Madrid, eating over-priced food, and getting ripped off by numerous bartenders. The only disappointing thing about this trip was the negative treatment we received by Spanish employees in the tourist industry- whether restaurants, museums, hotels or simply walking down the street, we got kicked over and over again by the rude, ignorant people who treated us like walking money just for wearing tennis shoes and being American. It's quite unfortunate to say that in this sense, Spain lost a couple big points this trip.

The enchanting, tourist-infested city of Toledo was the very last stop for Auntie Chris, Cathy and I. We enjoyed our last rounds with "the good book" and walked around like zombies... completely exhausted from a week of walking, driving, eating and drinking, we enjoyed the city via a the typical double-decker, bright red tourist bus that is now available for your use in most major tourist cities across the world. But what can I say is, sometimes you have to give into your aching feet and simply enjoy the view.

And last but not least, a happy 60th to my auntie Cathy,

who came all the way to Spain to celebrate!

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Three years ago, when I was experiencing my very first months living abroad in Barcelona, I traveled to Scotland with my dear friend Andrew. On our Isle of Skye bus tour we met a sweet German girl named Maggie and ever since kept in touch via postcards and emails. This last December I met up with her in Berlin and in early April she came to see me in Asturias. She was only here for a few days but got to see the beach, mountains and sider (of course!). The more people I meet traveling and wandering around the world, the more I realize how crazy hard it is to keep in touch and to actually get to see those people again... It's a pretty sweet feeling when you actually manage to keep in touch with someone who lives half way across the world!

...hasta luego!!

Bagpipin' Asturians

Surprise, surprise. Did you know Asturian people are pretty much Irish?

Upon moving up North, I have noticed that most people are fair skinned with lighter eyes and hair. It is not common, yet not crazily un-common to see a blonde haired, blue eyed Asturian walking the streets. I even have a student that I figured was a foreign exchange student from Sweden. Turns out his name is Carlos...

It did not take too long to discover that Asturias has a Celtic past, and, well, present... I guess that would also mean it has a future, right?

Along with whitey skin, la gaita (the bagpipe), is a huge part of Asturian culture. Shit, there is even a sidra (cider) named El Gaitero (the bagpipe player). Forget "OLE" and flamenco, here it is all about the kilt.

On the streets today, I heard proof. As I walked home from running errands I heard a dad yell at his son:

• "No me toques la gaita!"
• Literal translation: Don't touch my bagpipe!!
• Meaning translation: Leave me alone!

And I walked home happily, laughing alone.

Check out this map of current Celtic nations... I hope you are just as surprised as I am... or am I the only one who did not know Celts ever left the greater Ireland/Scotland metro area?

UP WITH YER KILT