Abroad in Spain: Travel Blog

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:

1. 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).
    
2. 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. 
    
3. 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.”
    
4. 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. 
    
5. 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…

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…

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…

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…

After a lovely five-week vacation in the USA to see friends and family, I’m now back in Spain and hopefully will be back to writing entries as normal on the blog.  It’s funny when you first return to a country after being away for a while – often times you notice things you hadn’t noticed before.  On this re-entry to Spain, one of the things that I noticed is what I like to call the “sidewalk shuffle.” 

You see, here in Spain there is a very large aged population and, since returning, I’ve come to realize that, well, old people are everywhere.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; however, it does present a certain problem when you are trying to make your way down a sidewalk. 

Imagine the following.  You are late for an important appointment.  You go out of your house to the street below and being walking hurriedly to your destination.  All of a sudden, you come across a row of very old “señoras” sprawled shoulder to shoulder across the entire width of the sidewalk, walking at a snail’s pace, and happily gossiping with each other.  They’re pretty much oblivious to the fact that you would like to get past them or that you even exist.  You try to pass them on the right and somehow they drift in that direction.  You then try to pass them on the left and they drift that direction too.  You can’t get around them, they’re taking up the entire sidewalk, and you’re worried about arriving late to your appointment.  You’re doing the sidewalk shuffle. 

I guess this is just something that happens in Spain… nobody is ever in much of a hurry to get anywhere.  Maybe it goes with the more relaxed lifestyle that, culturally, most English speakers aren’t as used to.  In any event, I’m back in Spain and back to doing some shuffling when I walk down the sidewalk.  A guiri has to do what a guiri has to do to get around in the city, I guess.  Continue reading this post…

The Burgos tourist train chugging along.

I don’t know if this is exactly what Quad City DJs had in mind when they created the song “C’mon Ride the Train” back in the mid-1990s.  It’s the Burgos “choo choo” tourist train and, for a small fee, it will take you to the most important monuments in the city of Burgos for your sightseeing pleasure. 

I still remember the first time I saw this unique creation creeping along the streets of Burgos at a whopping 5 miles per hour.  I was just walking along the sidewalk — minding my own business — when I suddenly looked up and my eyes laid upon it for the first time, a thing of beauty: the choo choo train.  You know, it’s not every day that you see a motorized, wheeled train chugging down the street, obeying traffic rules, and generally running without a train track; thus, my first reaction was to chuckle a little.  After the initial chuckle, I looked inside the train and saw all the tourists — cameras in hand – comfortably seated in the “passenger compartment” and I chuckled a bit more. 

Obviously, after seeing the tourist train, I just had to ride it.  A few days after the initial “sighting,” I got together a group of my friends and we had at it.  The ride lasted about 45 minutes and it passed by all the most historic places in Burgos.  The train came complete with an overhead loudspeaker which explained all aspects of the ride to the passengers: where the train was headed, what we were currently passing, etc.  To my surprise, the ride wasn’t that bad.  Of course, I don’t know if I’d rely on the Burgos tourist train to get me to Madrid (I suppose Renfe is better for that), but I guess it isn’t bad if you’re a tourist who wants to see the most important parts of the city.  Continue reading this post…