Afte one month in Spain, I have had a good opportunity to review life here.
Five things that I have missed about Spain:
· The very relaxed attitude to life and the mañana culture. I can really identify with this and it definitely takes out all the stress from the situation when you know that it is most unlikely -- well, almost guaranteed -- that whatever needs to be done has no chance of being done in any great hurry. If you are not familiar with this, it is highly frustrating to start with And, coming from a culture where everything must be done yesterday, this initially adds to the stress. However, it is amazing how quickly you realise that worrying about it will not speed anything up. Once you get used to this concept, there is much less stress, like none.
· A friend will just drive 200 km to pick you up and just shrug his shoulders and say it is nothing, then complete the distance in just over an hour while gesticulating wildly।
· The wonderful food that the country has to offer। Everything is really tasty, fresh and does not cost an arm and a leg. In fact, it is much cheaper than Britain. And good wine is kept inside the country and not exported. This means that you will often come across wine that you have never even heard of that tastes out of this world and costs next to nothing.
· Sitting down on one of the huge boulevards with a cold beer watching several generations of the same family passing by, ranging from a baby in the pram who is no more than two months old to the oldest member of the family who is so old that they probably remember when the Spanish Armada were feared worldwide. And all this, at nine o'clock in the evening!
· The smell of fresh aftershave wafting around inside bars that have fruit machines, television and radio blaring out at the same time -- just like Bar Italia in London।
· The women; it is their whole appearance and the way that they really look after themselves, carrying their heads proudly daring you to look. 95% of them are good-looking, 60% very beautiful and 20% absolutely stunning. Not a bad set of figures.
Five things that I have not missed about Spain:
· When you have just missed the last coach back to where you are staying because it just arrives and leaves without any announcement, and, just to make things even more confusing, there is a totally different name on the windscreen as the destination. When you approach the woman behind the ticket desk, she just wants to get home, and shrugs her shoulders and says that there is nothing that she can do. Furthermore, she will not refund the money. So you have to ask your friend to drive 200 km to come and give you a lift home. It is the attitude that I had forgotten about. It's just like when your card has been swallowed by the bank and you are destitute in a foreign country and no one can do anything because they need to buy vegetables or something really important before the shops close.
· The voices that are used when dubbing films. Why are they always the same? It would be easier just to insert subtitles. This would avoid having to listen to exceptionally bad translations and having to listen to a Spanish version of an American woman having a baby.
· If there is a problem to be overcome, the fact that shoulders will be shrugged, tuts, fingers wagged and then you will be probably helped anyway. I refer specifically to obstacles to wheelchairs such as roadworks and stairs.
· When there is a traffic jam, which is frequently, people just sit on their horns and make lots of noise rather than be patient or look for an alternative route. Why?
· Someone refuses to understand you although your Spanish is fluent, but they are being bloody-minded. Then they try and rip you off by charging you over €10 for a coffee, a beer and a couple of cold sandwiches.
· Workmen start to dig up a perfectly good pavement at eight o'clock in the morning, making the flat vibrate along with your head because the room that you are in is typically Spanish and very bare. Once you have been woken up, after about an hour the jackhammers cease and everything goes quiet. But the damage has been done and you are wide awake.
For people coming from such a regimented culture as in Britain, Spain appears to be a mysterious country full of contradictions. Why do something today if it can be put off until tomorrow? This is a truly unique country and I feel that we could learn so much about what is really important in life, namely the family and leading a stressfree existence.
Five things that I have missed about Spain:
· The very relaxed attitude to life and the mañana culture. I can really identify with this and it definitely takes out all the stress from the situation when you know that it is most unlikely -- well, almost guaranteed -- that whatever needs to be done has no chance of being done in any great hurry. If you are not familiar with this, it is highly frustrating to start with And, coming from a culture where everything must be done yesterday, this initially adds to the stress. However, it is amazing how quickly you realise that worrying about it will not speed anything up. Once you get used to this concept, there is much less stress, like none.
· A friend will just drive 200 km to pick you up and just shrug his shoulders and say it is nothing, then complete the distance in just over an hour while gesticulating wildly।
· The wonderful food that the country has to offer। Everything is really tasty, fresh and does not cost an arm and a leg. In fact, it is much cheaper than Britain. And good wine is kept inside the country and not exported. This means that you will often come across wine that you have never even heard of that tastes out of this world and costs next to nothing.
· Sitting down on one of the huge boulevards with a cold beer watching several generations of the same family passing by, ranging from a baby in the pram who is no more than two months old to the oldest member of the family who is so old that they probably remember when the Spanish Armada were feared worldwide. And all this, at nine o'clock in the evening!
· The smell of fresh aftershave wafting around inside bars that have fruit machines, television and radio blaring out at the same time -- just like Bar Italia in London।
· The women; it is their whole appearance and the way that they really look after themselves, carrying their heads proudly daring you to look. 95% of them are good-looking, 60% very beautiful and 20% absolutely stunning. Not a bad set of figures.
Five things that I have not missed about Spain:
· When you have just missed the last coach back to where you are staying because it just arrives and leaves without any announcement, and, just to make things even more confusing, there is a totally different name on the windscreen as the destination. When you approach the woman behind the ticket desk, she just wants to get home, and shrugs her shoulders and says that there is nothing that she can do. Furthermore, she will not refund the money. So you have to ask your friend to drive 200 km to come and give you a lift home. It is the attitude that I had forgotten about. It's just like when your card has been swallowed by the bank and you are destitute in a foreign country and no one can do anything because they need to buy vegetables or something really important before the shops close.
· The voices that are used when dubbing films. Why are they always the same? It would be easier just to insert subtitles. This would avoid having to listen to exceptionally bad translations and having to listen to a Spanish version of an American woman having a baby.
· If there is a problem to be overcome, the fact that shoulders will be shrugged, tuts, fingers wagged and then you will be probably helped anyway. I refer specifically to obstacles to wheelchairs such as roadworks and stairs.
· When there is a traffic jam, which is frequently, people just sit on their horns and make lots of noise rather than be patient or look for an alternative route. Why?
· Someone refuses to understand you although your Spanish is fluent, but they are being bloody-minded. Then they try and rip you off by charging you over €10 for a coffee, a beer and a couple of cold sandwiches.
· Workmen start to dig up a perfectly good pavement at eight o'clock in the morning, making the flat vibrate along with your head because the room that you are in is typically Spanish and very bare. Once you have been woken up, after about an hour the jackhammers cease and everything goes quiet. But the damage has been done and you are wide awake.
For people coming from such a regimented culture as in Britain, Spain appears to be a mysterious country full of contradictions. Why do something today if it can be put off until tomorrow? This is a truly unique country and I feel that we could learn so much about what is really important in life, namely the family and leading a stressfree existence.
