Posted by Chris Showers on December 5th, 2009.
 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…
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 26th, 2009.
I’ve noticed something since returning to Spain a couple of weeks ago: everyone is gone. What do I mean by that? It’s simple, really: August is “vacation” month in Spain and lots (and I do mean lots) of Spaniards go to the beach, the “pueblo,” or another country during this month.
Now, it’s not at all a bad thing that Spaniards leave in August, but I kind of wish they didn’t have to close down entire stores for the duration of their absence. It’s a little inconvenient to walk down the street to your favorite bakery and find a sign on the door that says that they have closed up shop for the whole month of August due to vacations. Of course, I guess everyone — even the baker — needs to get away and relax a little, right? Speaking of relaxation for the baker, I wonder how the owners of little “mom and pop” stores in the USA go on vacation? You never see shops closed there.
Here’s a little something fun for this August “vacation” post. How about if everybody who reads this writes a comment about their most recent and/or most memorable trip? I’d be interested in hearing about the great places that you’ve visited and the corners of the world that you’ve found yourself in. 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…
Posted by Chris Showers on August 16th, 2009.
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…
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…
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