A child plays in a fountain as her parents enjoy the sun at an outdoor café.
Anybody familiar with Spain knows that Burgos, the city in which I live, is quite famous for being a cold and sometimes snowy place in the winter. I guess that explains why as soon as spring arrives, people here take full advantage of it. As you can see in the above photo, lately we’ve had some nice weather here and the outdoor cafés (along with “street life” in general) have really been booming.
This is something I love about Spain. In most American cities, you don’t see very many people out taking a leisurely stroll or spending half an afternoon at a café soaking up the sunlight. It’s like we’re always running from one place to the next and we don’t take time to “stop and smell the roses,” so to speak. Continue reading this post…
I have been SUPER busy during the last two or three days. Why? It’s easy: today I have a couple American friends coming to stay the night and I’ve used the last day or so to get my apartment clean, make sure I have food in the refrigerator (since I’m a single guy, sometimes my fridge is a little bare), and generally “prepare” for their visit. In fact, I’ve done so much preparing that you would think Zapatero himself was going to show up at my door.
I usually try pretty hard to integrate myself into the “Spanish” lifestyle and really make an effort to not be one of those expats who lives in Spain but only associates with other people from his home country. In fact, I’d say that here in Spain about 99.9% of my contact is with Spaniards and I almost never talk to anyone from the USA. Soooo, this visit from the Americans will be sort of a “nice change.” Continue reading this post…
Here's a "Telemoped" used by "Telepizza" to deliver food.
If you thought being a pizza delivery boy was a bad job in the USA, you should try being one in Spain. As you can see from the above picture, here pizzas are delivered on “motorized pedicycles” (commonly known in the USA as “mopeds”) instead of being delivered in cars. Imagine doing that job in the rain.
You know, for as long as I’ve lived in Spain and as many pizzas as I’ve seen delivered, you would think that this would be something “normal” for me by now… but it’s not. I just can’t help but notice every time I hear the “roaring” sound of a Telepizza moped zigzagging through the busy streets of Burgos at top speed (5 MPH) or whenever I see an unusually large man perched atop an unusually small moped, fulfilling his pizza delivery duty. It’s just so different to me. In the USA, pizzas are always delivered by car. Continue reading this post…
Are you a webmaster? Do you like this site? Now you can have your very own, FREE Abroad in Spain Widget to place on your own site. You can get the code here. Continue reading this post…
Writing a blog, for me, is pretty beneficial in terms of keeping me sane. Especially given the fact that I’m living in Spain instead of my home country of the USA. Why do I say this? It’s simple, really: this blog is my “lifeline” to the English language and the USA. It’s the way I keep in contact with my native language and my native culture.
Although I love Spain and am very happy living here, I think I’d probably go a little nuts if I couldn’t express my thoughts somewhere in English and generally interact with people from my own culture from time to time. This blog lets me do that on a large scale from within the tiny city of Burgos where the total “American” population is probably about five. This blog also lets me meet a lot of interesting people from around the world — another pretty beneficial thing if I do say so myself. Continue reading this post…
I went to a Semana Santa (Holy Week) procession here in Burgos yesterday and have placed the video of it above for you to take a look at. Semana Santa in Spain is always something curious for Americans like me because the processions that are celebrated here are not like anything that we have in the States.
I still remember the first time that I saw a Semana Santa procession here in Spain. It was back when I was living and studying in Valladolid in the year 2007. It was actually a bit of a scary experience for me… after all, I wasn’t expecting to see people dressed like the KuKlux Klan walking through the streets of Spain. In fact, I remember that the absolute first procession that I ever went to was with an Irish friend of mine who, like me, also had never seen a Semana Santa procession before. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the “cloaked individuals” coming out of that church in Valladolid, slowly making their way into view, and my Irish friend saying to me with a look of astonishment on her face and a thick Irish accent, “Oh my God, who are those people???” Continue reading this post…
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