Posted by Chris Showers on June 6th, 2010.
 The butcher shops here in Spain come complete with hanging "legs of ham" to entice customers to buy (especially look where the red arrow is pointing). Have you ever woken up in the morning and had a hankering for ham? If you answered affirmatively to that question and you live in Spain, you’re in luck: a nice “leg of ham” is waiting for you just around the corner at your neighborhood deli. Yes, you heard right… here in Spain “ham legs” like the ones pictured above are suspended from the air and sold in places like grocery stores and delicatessens.
As an American, I was a little put off the first time I saw one of these ham legs literally “hanging around” in a grocery store. In fact, I remember asking myself how these things don’t go bad after being stuck in the middle of the store with no refrigeration whatsoever for days (or even months) on end. 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 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 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 10th, 2009.
 Here's a "Telemoped" used by "Telepizza" to deliver food. If you thought being a pizza delivery boy was a bad job in the USA, you should try being one in Spain. As you can see from the above picture, here pizzas are delivered on “motorized pedicycles” (commonly known in the USA as “mopeds”) instead of being delivered in cars. Imagine doing that job in the rain.
You know, for as long as I’ve lived in Spain and as many pizzas as I’ve seen delivered, you would think that this would be something “normal” for me by now… but it’s not. I just can’t help but notice every time I hear the “roaring” sound of a Telepizza moped zigzagging through the busy streets of Burgos at top speed (5 MPH) or whenever I see an unusually large man perched atop an unusually small moped, fulfilling his pizza delivery duty. It’s just so different to me. In the USA, pizzas are always delivered by car. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on May 11th, 2008.
 Prime Minister or Comedy Star? You be the judge... There is a joke in Spain that says that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the current Prime Minister of Spain, looks a lot like Mr. Bean, the ridiculous British comedy character. I’ve decided to place a little image above to allow you to compare the two. Zapatero, of course, is on the left and Mr. Bean is on the right. What do you think? Continue reading this post…
|
|
Recent Comments