Posted by Chris Showers on June 8th, 2010.
I woke up this morning at the usual time and, just like every other day, set out for the Plaza España to catch the bus that would transport me across the city and to the school where I work. After a few minutes at the bus stop, I began to realize that I was having to wait for the bus for a lot more time than usual. At first I thought my “number six” bus line was just running a little late… but then it dawned on me: the civil servant strike.
You see, city bus drivers are civil servants in Spain. As civil servants, they are included in the 5% average pay cut that Zapatero recently announced to help reduce Spain’s deficit and thus “save” the country from the financial crisis. Of course, this announced pay cut didn’t exactly go over very well with the civil servants (surprising, right?) and today they all went on a one-day strike to speak out against the change.
Spain seems to have become the “hot topic” in Europe right now with respect to the financial crisis and everyone is wondering if it will become the “next Greece.” Personally, I don’t think that things in Spain will reach the level they did in Greece; but, I’m no economic expert. In any case, if you’d like to read more about Spain and the financial crisis, you can check out this very good New York Times Blog article that explains the situation much better than I can.
I don’t really know how “worried” I should be about the crisis. In fact, I sometimes think that people here are blowing the whole thing a bit out of proportion and hoarding money unnecessarily. I suppose it’s understandable to an extent: nobody wants to be without a job or loose money that they have spent a lifetime saving. Still, I can’t help but feel as if Spaniards are overreacting. Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.
In the end, thanks to the civil servant strike, I had to take a taxi to get to school today. Let’s hope they don’t strike again anytime soon… taxis are much less convenient (and more expensive) than city buses.
Please, leave your thoughts about the crisis in Spain in the comments below. I’d like to know what others think about all this — expats and Spaniards alike. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on January 19th, 2010.
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:
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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).
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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…
Posted by Chris Showers on June 18th, 2009.
 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…
Posted by Chris Showers on April 28th, 2009.
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…
Posted by Chris Showers on April 19th, 2009.
 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…
Posted by Chris Showers on April 13th, 2009.
 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…
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