Posted by Chris Showers on August 4th, 2009.
 Bicibur bikes in their docking station, just waiting for someone to take them for a ride! Here’s a pretty cool idea that the Spanish Government came up with to both cut back on car pollution and keep people healthy at the same time: bicycle renting. Basically, bike “docking stations” like the one pictured above are starting to crop up all over Spanish cities. The idea is that a user can go to a docking station, swipe his ID card, and take a city-owned bike out for a ride. When the user is done with the bike, he can return it to any docking station in the city, eliminating the need to use a car to get from point A to point B.
Burgos recently implemented one of these systems (under the name “Bicibur”) and I think it’s actually a pretty ingenious idea. The cost of renting the bikes is really low — about two Euros for an ID card that unlocks the bikes and can be used for life – and the bike docking stations are pretty well-located within the city to allow users to pick up a bike at one location, drive it to their destination, and just leave it there without necessarily having to return it to its original location. In short, I’m pretty impressed with the program.
Still, I do see one small problem, at least in Burgos. Here, the bikes are really old and a tad on the crappy side. They generally work to get you from one side of the city to the other, but they don’t seem to be very well maintained. I suppose it’s too early to tell if the city is going to let the bikes deteriorate even more or step up and make repairs.
Another slight problem with this system is that I don’t usually see too many people using it (at least not here in Burgos). That leads me to something that we can debate in this post’s comments: if your city had a program like this one, would you use it? Why or why not? Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on August 1st, 2009.
 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…
Posted by Chris Showers on July 29th, 2009.
 A garbage can brims over as the Burgos Festivals come to an end. My regular readers know that, over the last couple weeks, I have been writing a mini-series on the 2009 Burgos Festivals – the biggest party of the year in the city of Burgos. To finish up the mini-series, I thought it would be appropriate to write this post about the tons of garbage that were produced (and needed to be cleaned up) as a result of the massive partying during festival week.
For those of you who have never been to Spain before, let me tell you that Spaniards are known to party hard until the wee hours of the night and all this partying can sometimes leave behind “trace evidence” in the form of empty food containers, bottles, etc. Judging from the amount of garbage in the container pictured above, the recent festival week in Burgos was no exception to the general “party all night long” rule. Still, despite all the partying, we have to give the Spaniards credit for always cleaning up their mess afterwards. Just take a look at the picture below to see what I mean. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on July 22nd, 2009.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was in a dance club in Burgos and suddenly the DJ began to blast that famous song sung by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in the film “Grease” — you know, the one whose lyrics say ”you’re the one that I want.” When I first heard the song come on, I couldn’t figure out why the DJ had chosen it. After all, it’s not exactly the most “current” or “best to dance to” song on the market. At least that’s what I thought. Apparently, I was wrong.
As soon as the song started pumping from the speakers in the club, all the Spaniards formed a line and began to dance in sync — with choreographed movements and beautiful timing — just as if they were actually living in the movie. That’s right, they danced just like Danny and Sandy in the movie, complete with the wavy hand movements and the “ooo, ooo, oooooo, honey” lyrics. What was really surprising to me was the fact that most of the Spaniards were even able to mutter out the chorus in English (with pronunciation that, well, more or less resembled English).
Now, this entire spectacle left me quite perplexed. After all, it’s not every day that you see a bunch of Spaniards suddenly form a line and dance as if they were performing an off-Broadway musical right in the middle of the discoteca. What’s even more surprising is that the “song of choice” happened to be from an American film as opposed to a Spanish one. So, since I was so stricken by this whole affair, I began to do some research by asking my Spanish friends what they knew about the film “Grease.” I came to find out that, in Spain, “Grease” is a true classic and most Spaniards have watched the film numerous times. Pretty surprising considering that most Americans have probably only seen the film once (at least I think that most Americans have only seen the film once — it doesn’t seem too popular in the USA to me).
In any event, I’d like to get down to the bottom of this whole “Grease Popularity” issue and I need your help. Please post your own opinion about the movie “Grease” in the comments of this post. It would also help if you posted the country you are from and the number of times that you have seen this film. Continue reading this post…
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