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…

A shop window is decorated to advertise the "rebajas" (sales) in Spain, which began on January 7th.

Here in Spain there are two major sales per year (known as rebajas in Spanish): one is set in January and another is set in July/August.  During these sales, people pretty much go crazy trying to buy up anything and everything that they could possibly need — at a bargain price, of course.  Think of it as a month-long version of the USA’s well-known “Black Friday.”  Long lines, shot nerves, and more than one overwhelmed, crying store employee are all common traits of the rebajas of Spain. 

As a foreigner I don’t really understand where Spaniards get the money to buy things during these sales.  You see, the winter sales begin on January 7th, which just so happens to be the day after the infamous Three Wise Men visit children’s homes to bring them presents (like Santa Claus in the States).  In the USA, most people are pretty much broke after Christmas from buying all the gifts.  In Spain, on the contrary, people go out and “shop till they drop” the day after Wise Men Day, their biggest gift-giving holiday.  Logical from an economic standpoint?  Not for me, at least. 

In any event, if you’re Spanish and you’re looking for a deal during these rebajas, I wish you the best of luck.  If you’re not Spanish, well, I guess you can save your money this January.  Continue reading this post…

Happy New Year to everyone!  This is the second New Year that I have spent in Spain and, after ”living” the holiday twice here, I thought I’d write a short post to tell those of you who are less familiar with Spain’s traditions a little about the holiday.  Basically, if you’re a Spaniard about to “ring in the New Year in style,” you need two essential items in very large quantities: grapes and fireworks.  Let me explain:

Essential item #1 — Grapes: Grapes are used during the final New Year’s Eve countdown right before midnight.  As Spaniards are counting down the final twelve seconds of the year, they eat grapes — one grape for each second marked by the clock.  As a result, it’s very typical to buy large amounts of grapes right before New Year’s Eve and then sit in front of the TV with your family on December 31st to eat the grapes during the “official countdown,” which is televised live from Madrid. 

Essential item #2 — Fireworks:  After counting down the final twelve seconds of the old year, Spaniards grab their fireworks, firecrackers, and other miscellaneous, loud pyrotechnic devices and head for the streets.  In fact, there are usually so many Spaniards on the streets shooting off fireworks just after midnight that the entire city fills with smoke and sounds like a war zone.  To be quite honest, the first time I saw this happening last year I didn’t really know what to think — it appeared to me to be a loud, dangerous pandemonium with fireworks flying everywhere.  I still wonder how more people don’t have accidents with all those firecrackers going off everywhere.  In any event, along with the grapes, fireworks are a “must” on any Spanish New Year shopping list. 

There you have it.  Two “essential items” for the New Year in Spain.  What are your “New Year Essentials?”  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…

Signs advertising the Christmas Lottery are EVERYWHERE in Burgos.

I was walking home from a class tonight when I noticed a small “pattern” start to emerge: lighted signs advertising the “Christmas Lottery” were on just about every street corner.  I always knew that Spaniards were a little crazy about their “Lotería de Navidad;” but, I guess I’ve never before noticed the extremes to which the craziness goes. 

If you’re not familiar with the Christmas Lottery in Spain, it’s basically a huge lottery drawing held around Christmas that the entire country buys a ticket for (or maybe two tickets, or sometimes three tickets, and there are probably cases of people buying four tickets, or five, but certainly not more than six… or seven).  The truth is that the popularity of this lottery is unbelievable.

Since I’m not Spanish, I don’t totally understand the attraction to the Christmas Lottery — I suppose your odds of winning are higher or the jackpot is bigger, but since I don’t play I’m not really sure.  In any event, I can tell you that people stand in long lines to buy Christmas Lottery tickets at places where winning tickets have been sold in the past and, in general, the entire population goes “crazy” buying up all the tickets in existence in places like tobacco shops, bars, and official lottery retail outlets. 

So, if you’re Spanish and you’ve bought a ticket for the Christmas Lottery this year, let me wish you all the “suerte” in the world… and please, do leave me a comment explaining what you think is the attraction to the Christmas Lottery in Spain.  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…