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…

Some young musicians perform during Youth Music Week in Burgos.

That’s right, this week was the “Caja Círculo” sponsored “Youth Music Week” here in Burgos.  That means that all week long “Caja Círculo” stages were being put up and taken down around the city and various young artists were scheduled to perform on them.  It was really an interesting sight — as I was walking through various sections of the city, I got to be “serenaded” by the many young musicians.  Of course, some of their music was a little too “heavy” for my taste (by “heavy” I mean head banging, screaming at the top of your lungs noise)… but that’s ok.

This is one thing that I like about Spain: there’s always a cultural “something” to do and usually that “something” is free or low-cost.  Of course, in this case, head banging teens screaming lyrics at the top of their lungs wasn’t really my “cup of tea,” but still, it’s cool that this event was held in the city.  Continue reading this post…

Today I woke up around 6:00 AM and went to school like normal; however, when I arrived I got quite the surprise.  In fact, as soon as I walked through the door, I was surrounded by my coworkers telling me that the European Health Commissioner had recommended that nobody travel to the USA or Mexico because of a recent swine flu outbreak.  This came as quite a shock to me because I hadn’t really watched the news yesterday and I had no idea that there had even been a swine flu outbreak in the USA.  Thus, as soon as I had a few moments at school, I went online and found this article which does confirm that EU officials are cautioning European travelers not to go to America.  Apparently, there are also some confirmed cases of people in Europe having the disease and authorities say that the people here who have contracted swine flu have had some type of recent contact with either the USA or Mexico. 

The whole “swine flu scare” that is occurring right now in Spain reminds me a little of what happened in the USA a few years ago when mad cow disease broke out in Europe.  People from the USA who traveled to Europe were cautioned not to eat beef and generally Americans were a bit afraid that if they went to Europe, they would contract mad cow.  Now, the same thing seems to be happening, but reversed: it’s now the Europeans who are afraid to travel to America for fear of getting ill.  Continue reading this post…

Nothing like some spaghetti sauce from a box rather than a jar. Yum!

Ever since arriving in Spain in September, I have been eating my spaghetti without sauce.  I would put butter on it, or maybe some cheese, but never spaghetti sauce.  Why?  Here in Spain spaghetti sauce is only sold in boxes – not in jars — and until recently I just couldn’t bring myself to eat “fried tomato” from a cardboard box.  In the USA when you want to have some sauce with your spaghetti, you buy a little Ragú in a jar and have at it.  For the longest time, I just couldn’t comprehend how “cardboard box sauce” could be the same.   

Anyway, things have changed now.  I finally got tired of eating my spaghetti dry and bought a box of “fried tomato” at the supermarket down the street.  As you can see in the above photo, the box came complete with a picture of a tomato on the front (for us foreigners to easily recognize it) and there was even an “easy open top.”  Continue reading this post…

A child plays in a fountain as her parents enjoy the sun at an outdoor café.

Anybody familiar with Spain knows that Burgos, the city in which I live, is quite famous for being a cold and sometimes snowy place in the winter.  I guess that explains why as soon as spring arrives, people here take full advantage of it.  As you can see in the above photo, lately we’ve had some nice weather here and the outdoor cafés (along with “street life” in general) have really been booming. 

This is something I love about Spain.  In most American cities, you don’t see very many people out taking a leisurely stroll or spending half an afternoon at a café soaking up the sunlight.  It’s like we’re always running from one place to the next and we don’t take time to “stop and smell the roses,” so to speak.  Continue reading this post…

I have been SUPER busy during the last two or three days.  Why?  It’s easy: today I have a couple American friends coming to stay the night and I’ve used the last day or so to get my apartment clean, make sure I have food in the refrigerator (since I’m a single guy, sometimes my fridge is a little bare), and generally “prepare” for their visit.  In fact, I’ve done so much preparing that you would think Zapatero himself was going to show up at my door. 

I usually try pretty hard to integrate myself into the “Spanish” lifestyle and really make an effort to not be one of those expats who lives in Spain but only associates with other people from his home country.  In fact, I’d say that here in Spain about 99.9% of my contact is with Spaniards and I almost never talk to anyone from the USA.  Soooo, this visit from the Americans will be sort of a “nice change.”  Continue reading this post…