Posted by Chris Showers on June 8th, 2010.
 A headless, umbrella-wielding street performer does his thing in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid. After living in Spain for more or less two years now, I thought I’d seen everything… I was wrong. Just the other day I was in Madrid and happened upon this “headless” street performer out to please the crowd of people who were passing through the Puerta del Sol. Seeing him made me reflect a bit on some of the acts that I’ve seen on the streets of Spain – not only in Madrid but also in other cities.
Indeed, the streets of many of the Spanish cities in which I’ve lived have, at times, looked like the audition line for American Idol. I’ve seen singers, dancers, musicians, clowns, jugglers, acrobats, and –today– a headless man. Some of these acts really are quite impressive — especially those on the streets of Madrid — but there are always a few “duds” as well. You know, the typical homeless guy banging a bongo drum to no recognizable rhythm and trying to earn a few céntimos in the process. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on June 6th, 2010.
 The butcher shops here in Spain come complete with hanging "legs of ham" to entice customers to buy (especially look where the red arrow is pointing). Have you ever woken up in the morning and had a hankering for ham? If you answered affirmatively to that question and you live in Spain, you’re in luck: a nice “leg of ham” is waiting for you just around the corner at your neighborhood deli. Yes, you heard right… here in Spain “ham legs” like the ones pictured above are suspended from the air and sold in places like grocery stores and delicatessens.
As an American, I was a little put off the first time I saw one of these ham legs literally “hanging around” in a grocery store. In fact, I remember asking myself how these things don’t go bad after being stuck in the middle of the store with no refrigeration whatsoever for days (or even months) on end. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on January 19th, 2010.
I’ve lived in Spain for about two years now, yet I’m still very much a guiri in certain aspects. For those of you who don’t know what a guiri is, it’s basically Spain’s term for a laughable, pasty-white, foreign tourist who is here on vacation but doesn’t really “fit in.” Yes indeed, the beaches of Spain fill up with guiris in the summer months and in the winter a few of us — me, for example – stick around.
Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself pretty well-integrated into Spanish society; however, I’ll always have certain “guiri characteristics” when it comes to a few things. Here are the top five reasons why I still consider myself to be a guiri:
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I eat fast food: In Spain, the land of the Mediterranean diet, I eat fast food — and I eat it quite regularly. In fact, when I confess to Spaniards that I make at least one trip to McDonald’s a week, they simply cannot believe me. Eating fast food just isn’t as common here as it is in the States. I guess if you eat a lot of fast food you’re still a guiri in some respect (you’re also probably at a higher risk for heart disease, but let’s save that for a different post).
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I have a different concept of time: Most Spaniards have a different concept of time than I do (I’m not saying that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it is something I notice). For example, if I tell a group of Spanish friends that I will meet them at 10:00 PM in the city center, I arrive to the city center a little early — perhaps at 9:53 or so. Spaniards, on the other hand, begin to arrive around 10:00 and it’s not really unusual for them to arrive even a tad later than 10:00. So, while the Spaniards are living it up with their laid-back lifestyle and arriving at their earliest convenience, I (the guiri) am nervously looking at my watch and wondering where everybody is at.
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I eat lunch at 12:30 or 1:00: In Spain, a late lunch is king. The normal lunch hour is from 2:00 to 5:00 PM and people typically eat at any time during that three-hour span. I, as a guiri, do not like waiting that long. In fact, when I lived in the USA I often ate lunch around 11:30 AM; so, waiting until 2:00 is something that I try to avoid (if I can). My Spanish housemates laugh when I eat so early and tell me that I have some very “strange customs.” Still, I persist with my “guiri ways.”
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The kissing thing confuses me: It is very common here in Spain to give kisses on the cheek when you are meeting someone for the first time or to greet someone that you haven’t seen in a while. This is something that is never done in the USA and, as a result, it’s something that has always confused me. I never know who I should give two cheek kisses to and who I shouldn’t. Sometimes the person who I’m meeting expects two kisses and other times they don’t… the whole cheek kissing thing is really a bit of a mystery for a poor guiri like me, even to this day.
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You tell me: If you’re an expat living in Spain, help me finish this post by writing how you are still a guiri in the comments section below. If you’re a Spaniard, perhaps you’d like to comment on some of the strange things that guiris do in your country. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on December 20th, 2009.
The other day I received a package that my parents had sent to me for Christmas. I wasn’t home when the mailman made the first attempt to deliver the package; so, he left me a “notice of arrival” on the door of my apartment. Shortly after looking at the notice that the mailman had left, I realized that he had spelled my name incorrectly. Instead of writing “Christopher” on the notice, he had written “Kristofer.”
Until coming to Spain for the first time several years ago, I never realized quite how challenging it was to spell “Christopher.” Soon after arriving to the country, however, the “complexity” of my name became quite clear to me. In fact, after living in Spain for several years, I think I’ve seen probably just about every spelling of the word “Christopher” imaginable on all types of things ranging from official governmental documents to hotel reservations and pizza delivery orders.
Still, I must say that “Kristofer” isn’t really that far off considering some of the other spellings I have seen. In fact, one time a Spaniard wrote me an email that began with the salutation “Hola Christ.” Obviously, I was flattered that the person writing to me considered me to be the Son of God… until I realized that he was simply trying to abbreviate my name and that “Christ” was just the best abbreviation he could come up with.
I suppose that my name is hard to spell for Spaniards because in Spanish things are spelled phonetically — Spanish people are simply not used to silent letters and ‘ph’ combinations that sound like the letter ‘f.’ It’s probably a cultural thing as well: if my name were something with more “Hispanic Flair” — like Juan or Julio — I’m sure they’d be able to spell it correctly.
Here’s a question for the comments section of this post. If you’re a foreigner in Spain, has your name ever been spelled incorrectly by Spaniards? If you’re a Spaniard, have you ever had your name spelled incorrectly by a foreigner? Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on November 16th, 2009.
 I’ve joined the ranks of old ladies and homeless people everywhere by buying myself a shopping cart. Carrefour, one of the biggest chain supermarkets/one-stop-shopping stores in Spain, recently made the decision to stop giving plastic bags to its customers under the assumption that less bags is friendlier for the environment. In fact, the whole “bag debate” has been going on for quite a while in Spain. Truthfully, I don’t really know if the stores are using less (or no) plastic bags because they genuinely care about the environment or if they are just doing so because it cuts down on costs. In any event, that’s not really the reason I’m writing this post….
As a result of Carrefour no longer giving out plastic shopping bags to its customers, I have had to become a bit “innovative” in figuring out a way to get my weekly grocery order home from the store (remember, I don’t have a car to take my groceries home in). In Spain, a lot of older ladies — the “señoras,” if you will – use rolling shopping carts like the one pictured above to carry their items from the store to their homes. Since the whole “rollable cart” idea is so popular here amongst the older ladies, I thought I would give it a whirl. So, just a few weeks ago, I decided to buy my very own, green shopping cart to help me carry my items home from the store (it’s the cart pictured above, isn’t it a beauty?).
Now I have my new, glorious, green shopping cart. There’s just one problem: in the States, the only people who push shopping carts around in the streets are homeless people. Thus, when I told some of my friends and family members back home that I bought a shopping cart to transport my groceries, I got the obvious chuckle and questions such as, “Do you carry around a blanket and a pillow in it too?” Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on August 20th, 2009.
 Cars parked outside the blue lines… is this a way for Spaniards to rebel against the parking police? I took this “aerial shot” from the living room window of my apartment (I live on the fourth floor). I wanted to share it with you because, as you can see, there are four cars parked along the street and, to my disbelief, none of them are actually parked within the blue lines the way they should be. But don’t take my word for it — click on the picture above to see the larger version and judge for yourself just how “off the mark” each car is.
No matter what time of day it is or how many cars are parked along my street, none of them ever use the blue lines. In fact, I am looking out the window right now and see over 20 cars parked everywhere but within the blue lines. When I see this, I can’t help but wonder why and how it happens. In the USA, it’s pretty unlikely that you would regularly see cars parked like this for the simple fact that they’d be fined almost immediately for taking up more than one space.
So, here’s something for us to debate in this post. Why do you think that “park jobs” in Spain are so “unique?” Are Spaniards in Burgos starting a non-conformist parking movement? Is this a way for them to rebel against meter maids everywhere? Maybe it just boils down to a different way of looking at the world? Leave your opinion below. Continue reading this post…
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