EXPAT OBSERVATIONS: SUNDAYS IN SPAIN

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There's an ever-growing list of Spanish things I want to import to the US, but regrettably, my favorite is not so easily transported in a carry-on: the Spanish Sunday.

Sundays are special in Spain. Time stops. Much like the total country shutdown that is August or the 2-5PM siesta, Sunday is a time of forced rest. Virtually all stores — grocery stores, malls, Ikea — are closed, which means there's absolutely no errand-running. For Americans accustomed to 24/7 accessibility, this can epitomize inconvenience — the kids' international school had a whole parent orientation segment addressing this very issue — but once you get used to it (read: you remember to plan Sunday dinner on Saturday), it's bliss.

Because no one has the "I'm busy" excuse, Spaniards use Sundays to congregate. And eat. For many, many hours at a time. We've been invited to partake in a few Sunday lunches so far, and they are easily 6-7 hour affairs. This past weekend, a colleague invited several of us to her family's homestead (complete with 12th century castle) in Alella, a hilltop wine town overlooking the Mediterranean; we arrived at 11:00AM and left just past 6:00PM. There was a walk through the vineyards, pool and playtime in the garden, an early (1:00PM) lunch for the children and a normal (2:00) lunch (paella cooked over a special outdoor propane burner) for the adults, and then coffee and dessert and fruit and chatting. Rather than the American concern of overstaying your welcome, the worry here is about understaying. It's an approach to life that we can totally get behind.

IDENTITY CRISIS

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A funny thing happened last week: 143 people started calling me "Professor." 

After 22+ years of being the student, I'm having a bit of an identity crisis. I keep telling them to call me Kate, but it's just not sticking. That said, I'm also knee-deep in course prep right now with very little to say that's blog-worthy. So as I wade through the next few weeks of heavy teaching, I leave you with few words but a few pics.

 

EXPAT OBSERVATIONS: GROCERY SHOPPING

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"Let's talk about grocery shopping."

This, my friends, is a universal conversation starter with all expats, new and established. It's a topic that guarantees bonding-through-commiseration and if you're lucky, the sharing of non-Google-able insights and tricks. The struggle is real, and it's so much more than new brands and unfamiliar foods. Consider...

You need groceries. No, be more specific. What kind of groceries do you need? Enter: the highly fragmented world of Spanish food shopping. There are supermarkets, sure. But each neighborhood also has its own public market and at least two dozen places to buy bread. Then there are specialty shops for produce (e.g., the close-and-cheap one where you can find good citrus, the further mid-priced one where you can find good berries, the premium one with a "do not touch" policy where ladies in white coats do the finding for you). There are specialty shops for meats (e.g., one for fish, one for Catalan meats, one for Argentine meats, one for jamon iberico). And then there are organic versions of each of those. The result is that you will have an unbelievable selection of amazing foods, but everyone (not exaggerating) has a ten-point "I-go-here-for-X-and-there-for-Y" food shopping strategy. Know that you will spend approximately 3.7x more waking minutes thinking about/doing grocery-related activities than you did in the States.

only an idiot could miss The Personal shopping buggy checking area

Okay, so let's say you go the supermarket route. You drive and park in an impossibly small underground garage whose paint-scraped walls tell the tale of battles waged and won against unsuspecting fenders. Adrenaline subsiding, you walk in, quietly pleased at how "local" your personal shopping buggy and reusable bags make you look.

europe's ingenious way of getting people to put shit back where it belongs 

But alas, don't make the rookie mistake of actually shopping with your buggy. No no. Personal shopping buggies must be checked in the personal-shopping-buggy-checking-area. You will receive no fewer than 12 dirty looks should you forget this point, you ugly American.

So you walk over to the store-supplied grocery carts. But they're all chained together like a rigged brain teaser puzzle with no possible solution. You loiter self-consciously off to one side as you wait to see how someone else does it. You realize you must insert a 1 euro coin into the handle of the cart to release it. You're relieved to find that you actually have a 1 euro coin. You're impressed to learn that same 1 euro coin will be returned to you when you put the cart back in its proper place. (Smooth move, management.)

Finally time for the shopping. Last week your hungry stomach dictated the grocery list and your hands obediently picked up whatever looked good. This week, you've promised a certain 4-year-old boy who has a tendency of never forgetting anything that you would make chocolate chip cookies with him. Which means you have a recipe. Which means you need specific ingredients. Which means you're not just wingin' it this time, mama. 

11 Pounds of sugar, for which the primary use is sweetening 2 cups of coffee a day. #heretostay

Suffice it to say: Nothing is where you think it should be. Nothing. Baking soda is kept by the salts (of which there are approximately 20 varieties), while baking powder is kept near the flour. Eggs are unrefrigerated. Chocolate chips are apparently not a thing in Spain, so you can either buy 8 tiny novelty bags that cost 4 euros each, or you can chop up a chocolate bar that you're kinda-but-not-totally sure will work. You decide that if all else fails, you will just go out for gelato.

And then there are the packaging sizes. The metric system mocks you daily, but most especially in the kitchen. You have a flashback to last week's online grocery shopping error when a 5kg (11 pound) bag of sugar showed up on your doorstep. Kilograms make everything bigger than you're used to — larger sticks of butter, bags of flour and sugar — while liters make everything smaller (we buy many, many liters of milk). You buy extra of everything because you're not sure you'll have enough and you're sure as hell not running back out to grab it. 

Yogurt aisle 1 of 2

As you finish up, you remember that you also wanted yogurt. But as you round the corner, two refrigerated aisles of top-to-bottom yogurt close in on you. The variety overwhelms you. You're pretty sure you have a literal PhD in this subject, but you're instantly paralyzed by the dizzying number of choices nonetheless. When you come to, you examine the fridges just long enough to realize they're organized by flavor, not by brand. You didn't realize such an important distinction existed between Greek plain, Greek plain with sugar, Greek vanilla, plain creamy, plain creamy with sugar, strawberry Greek with/without fat [etc.]. You just knew you wanted La Fageda. Nevermind. You will not have yogurt this week.

Exhausted, you wheel up to the cash register to check out. In rapid-fire Spanish, the cashier greets you. You smile and nod, trying to recapture your air of "localness," while listening for the inevitable question: "Que necesita una bolsa?" You've gotten burned by this one enough times to anticipate it, so you proudly hold up your reusable sack and tell her that no, you don't need a bag, gracias, adios. 

 

 

 

REAL LIFE RESUMES

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Well I wished for real life to resume, and resume it did. With a bang.

Aaron got bacterial colitis on Sunday and spent the week fasting and being initiated into the Spanish healthcare system. 

The kids started school. On the first day, I got to say goodbye to a hysterically crying Eliza, and then to Owen and his new friend, Budding Independence, who were incensed at my desire to escort them into school. (In fact, I was told at dinner that his "least favorite part of the day was you walking me to class." Dagger —> heart.)

And in the middle of the week, my feisty, generous, one-of-a-kind grandmother passed away after a cruel battle with stomach cancer. If she's half as fiery on The Other Side as she was on this one, we're all going to have one hell of a guardian angel.

THE LAST HURRAH OF SUMMER

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We just got home from an impromptu three-day trip to Andorra, a place I'm pretty sure I never thought about visiting because I'm pretty sure I never thought about it, period.

The country (okay, fine, "principality") of Andorra is nestled between the French and Spanish borders in a landlocked 180-square-mile plot of Pyrenees. It's the only country in the world whose national language is Catalan (though pro-independence Spanish Catalans hope to change that) and despite its proximity to France, more people there speak both Spanish and Portuguese than French. Locals here quickly write it off as "basically just Catalonia" that provides no reason to visit other than skiing or shopping, but given that it's only 125 miles away from Barcelona, we decided to give it a shot. 

We got in the car (oh yeah, we bought a funky diesel Euro-mobile a couple weeks ago) and headed northward on Tuesday afternoon. DJ Owen's musical selection, Jackson 5's Christmas album (start to finish, don't-assume-he's-not-paying-attention-and-try-to-fast-forward), got us in the mood for mountains, even if we're still several months (and 40 degrees) away from winter. Aaron found a fantastic ski resort on booking.com that's just as charming in the heat of summer and provides lovely views of lush green ski slopes. We spent Wednesday riding gondolas up and down the mountain and practicing our chairlift dismounts. On Thursday, we took a 5.5 mile hike (we are proud of/still in shock that our kids can/will walk that far sans complete meltdown) and then traded off kid duty and time at the spa.  

Now we're back in Barcelona, waiting and wishing for the return of all the city's inhabitants. It's hard to convey just how quiet (and frankly, how desolate) Barcelona's residential areas feel in August; streets that are crazy busy 11 months of the year are completely Boston-in-a-blizzard empty for four straight weeks. Shops are still closed and our favorite bread store went on baking hiatus for the month, so we're looking forward to life resuming.