Overheard On A Bus

I do not often travel on a bus, but sometimes it is handy to get into town like that and not to have to worry about where to park the car. So, the other day I needed to see our lawyer and took the bus. I am really glad I did. I keep laughing every time I recall the conversation I overheard between two English men that sat on the seats behind me.

It was fairly clear to me that one of the men lives here, and the other one was staying with him on holiday. The resident explained various aspects of life here and generally what he had to say made complete sense. Then we passed some working girls standing on the roundabout. Here working girls tend to congregate near traffic junctions and roundabouts, usually on the main road. Normally they are not to be seen during the hours of daylight, but come out in full numbers when it starts to get dark.

As we approached the village where I live it was just getting dark and a couple of early girls where already in position. The resident explained to the visitor that these were working girls and were called 'bandas sonoras' and that just before elections they are all taken away by the Guardia, only to be released again after the elections are safely over.

All of the above is true, except the girls are not called 'bandas sonoras' , that is Spanish for the rumble strips that run along the road and when you drive over them they make a noise. Very often the girls will be standing under the sign that warns drivers that there are bandas sonoras on the sides of the carriageway. Our resident had obviously assumed that this was where the girls were allowed to advertise their wares and that the state had kindly provided them with their own advertisement.

I did not have the heart to put him straight, because it is actually quite a nice way to refer to the girls, though I think it might be an even better name for a Pop Group.

It's A Gas

One of the main problems about living where we live, is that there is no mains gas supply. Not just to our house, but to all the houses in this region. This means that we have to buy bottled gas. In Spain this is not at all uncommon, and there are regular supply points where lorries with gas bottles are parked, so that you can replace your bottle there.

It was a small inconvenience, that took a long time to get used to. Originally when we moved here, we had no car. We were told the time that the gas lorry should be outside the apartment building where we lived then. Small problem, we were both at work when the lorry was there, so we could not organise a swap of bottles with the lorry. This meant walking to the nearest supermarket that supplies gas, 2 km away, and carrying the gas home. I am not particularly strong, and a gas bottle when full weighs a lot. So we purchased a trolley and walked the gas back and forth to the apartment.

Now we have a car. Much easier. Throw the bottle in the back and get some gas. One of my main duties as a nurse in the homes of people is ensuring they have gas and connecting it to their cooker, their shower or whereever they need it. I have had desperate phone calls from patients at 6.00 a.m. telling me they have run out of gas and please can I come immediately. Needless to say, all my patients now have spare gas bottles in their homes, so all I have to do at that time of the day is reconnect them.

In our new home, the only thing that uses gas is the shower. It means that our cooker again is electrical, which is great, because we always used to run out of gas in the middle of cooking our food. Now we only run out of gas when I am in the shower and have just applied shampoo to my hair - leading to a lot of swearing and shouting as the icecold water pours over my head and down my back.

The good thing about gas is though, that as we can only use it when we have bought it, there is no unexpectedly high bill suddenly. We have also noticed that the government lowers the retail price of gas the moment that general gas supplies became cheaper. Whereas in England, when petrol or gas wholesale prices came down, it took ages for those savings to be passed on to the customers, here is happens almost instantaneously.

I expect that eventually we will all get mains gas, and another little bit of the 'otherness' of Spain will then disappear. Part of me will regret that but the part of me that has greasy hair because I could not rinse out the shampoo will welcome the day.

To Be Or Just Be Temporarily...

I have now lived in Spain for two years, and well remember my ignorance thinking that I could learn to speak Spanish within about a year of arriving here. This has proved to be incorrect. I had mistakenly thought that because I could already speak three foreign languages, for some reason learning the fourth would be easy. I had conveniently forgotten the fact that I learned those three languages over a period of several years, and at a time in my life when learning was a lot easier than it is now.

So I started my Spanish lessons and one of the first things I learned was that the Spanish have two verbs for 'to be'. One is 'ser' which means to be permanently, or an aspect of you that is permanent, such as 'soy enfermera' (I am a nurse) or 'soy Holandesa' (I am Dutch). The second verb is 'estar', so it would be 'estoy enferma' (I am ill) or 'estoy cansada' (I am tired).

This distinction is not one that comes easily to me, none of the other languages I have studied have two different verbs for 'to be' - and sometimes I am not sure what verb to apply - I am a nurse now, but maybe tomorrow I will stop being one and do something completely different, so should I apply ser or estar?

But, apart from the frustration of trying to remember which verb to use, there is something very charming about the idea that you can have 'to be' and 'to be temporarily', which I think is actually a good reflection of the Spanish state of mind and their tempo of living. It is as if the language includes an acknowledgement of the fact that there are lots of things (like being ill, being tired) that are only temporary and that will pass. The Spanish seem to have incorporated in their language a sort of get-out or temporary clause, that says, ok you are ill now but it will pass, it is not a permanent state of being. Quite healthy really and maybe it explains their generally happy attitude towards life.

The Burial of the Sardine

One thing you have to get used to when living in Spain is the Fiesta. The Spanish are probably the fiesta people of the world. They love their fiestas and spend a lot of time preparing for them. In Spain you buy a special calendar and there are so called 'Red Days' on the calendar - which are national Fiestas (for example the Day of the Constitution). These are compulsory and most businesses have to shut for those days. In my line of business, home care and nursing, we are allowed to carry on working, because patients need to still receive their care and have breakfast etc. The only other business that will always be open on Fiesta days (except Christmas day) are the bakers. The Spanish generally do no store bread, they buy it fresh every day, and by law bakers have to provide bread each day of the year apart from Christmas day.

Apart from the Red Days there are local fiestas, depending on which Saint covers your village or town. Also there is Semana Santa (starts Thursday before Easter and finishes Monday after) when the banks are shut and some supermarkets open for limited hours to let people restock on necessities. All other shops tend to be shut. Christmas is of course also celebrated here, but not nearly as important here as Easter.

Of course the Spanish also have Carnaval, which is for the three days leading up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent (40 days leading up to Easter). Depending on where you live, Carnaval can be a large affair (Benidorm, Alicante) or small (our village and surrounding villages). People dress up and party. Carnaval is a very very old tradition and there are records of Carnaval being celebrated in the Middle Ages. Then is appears it had something to do with using up all the old stock of flour, milk, butter etc. before Lent started (same applies in UK when they have Shrove Tuesday and use up their provisions for making pancakes).

One of the nice points of Carnaval comes at the very end, with the Burial of the Sardine. In Alicante this takes place at the beach - with the ritual burial of carnaval masks in the sand. In some other places a woman is chosen to be the Lady of the Sardine and the sardine is marched in ritual procession through the streets of the town. The sardine is then set on fire and the ashes are buried. This is supposed to mark the end of Carnaval. The Spanish painter Goya painted a beautiful painting of revellers which is known as The Burial of the Sardine.

I find the ritual of the burial of the sardine very interesting. Although it is meant to be part of Carnaval, and an essentially Christian ceremony marking the end of festivities and the beginning of the sombre period of Lent, I think it may go back much further than Christianity and be a ritual that actually was a bit like the ritual drawing of animals in order to capture them or the ritual slaughter of a young animal in order to placate the gods and provide a good lambing season or whatever the animal was that was slaughtered. Could this not be a ritual by fishermen to increase their catch? I have not found any evidence of this yet, but am looking through old documents now and will let you know if and when I find something. Whatever the truth, it is a very interesting ritual and well worth a trip to Spain.

The Joy Of Not Telefonica

Well, last week we finally decided we could not take the appalling service from Telefonica any longer, and we have spent our hard-earned money on getting a Wipzona installation. It cost us €300,00 to get the installation set up, and will then cost €40,00 each month for the connection, but after the dreadful time we have had with Telefonica that seems to be a small investment for our mental health.

I rang Wipzona and spoke to a man who had the most interesting English accent, in fact he turned out to be Norwegian. Since our village is largely inhabited by Norwegians I took this as a promising sign, since they generally do not put up with bad service. He said they would try and get the line installed before Easter, but if they could not manage it they would come on the Tuesday after Easter.

Imagine my delight when in fact they came on the Tuesday before Easter. In Spain, Semana Santa, or Holy Week starts on the Thursday before Easter and carries on until the Monday after Easter Sunday, and nothing much gets done during the period.

Predictably it was absolutely bucketing down with rain when the man arrived. Luckily we had decided not to have the installation on the roof but on the side wall of the balcony, which meant we could stand there with two umbrellas, keeping him and ourselves dry. The actual installation did not take much time and we are now the proud owners of a dish like structure on the side of the house that has transformed our lives.

Before, every time it rained, there was a storm, we had clouds, in fact whenever there was 'weather', we had no connection. We have had a dreadful period of rain and storms over the last 3 days again, but the connection keeps on going. No, it is not very fast, but it works and it keeps on working. No longer do we have to sweat to see if we can get a programme downloaded before the connection goes away again. I can surf secure in the knowledge that I do not have to wait for two hours again before I can get in.

Sometimes, it is just better to spend a bit of money upfront and to have good service, than to do things on the cheap and have no service at all.

Keep it up Wipzona, I will be recommending you to all my friends !

The Joy of Telefonica

I was going to write about how to physically get used to living in Spain, but since my internet connection has been virtually non-existent for the last two days, I thought I would write about the frustrations of dealing with the monopoly communications company Telefonica.

This is the statement made on the English site of Telefonica regarding their 'vision'

"We want to enhance people's lives and the performance of businesses as well as the progress of the communities where we operate, by delivering innovative services based on information and communication technologies'
Spirit of Progress

It is unlikely that anyone who has received services from Telefonica would realize that this is the vision of the company that never turns up when they have an appointment, are unable to understand letters and generally act as a monopoly company would, with complete disregard for their customers.

We have lived for two years in Spain now. Originally we had our main land-line number and our internet connection from them. When our internet connection kept cutting out, we rang their helpline number. Nothing happened. We were told there was nothing wrong with our connection and we must be using the computers too much. Because at the time we did not know anyone at all in Spain, the package we had that allowed us to make free phone calls within Spain was not appropriate and we tried several times to change to a different package. We are paying approximately 80 Euros a month for our internet connection, as the telephone was only ever used for incoming phone calls.

Ultimately we e-mailed Telefonica, because we found a different internet provider (or so we thought!). We asked them to disconnect our telephone and internet connection with immediate effect. This was on 12th June last year. We paid our bill on 21st June and again another bill on the 21st July, after which I went to the bank and discontinued our Standing Order. I rang Telefonica and informed them that we had ourselves put away the telephone and router and when would they come and pick them up. They seemed to have no record of our e-mail. We e-mailed again. Again no reaction. By this time we felt maybe snail-mail might be a better option, so we searched and searched, but no actual physical address to send a letter to could be found. After several more telephone calls, we hit upon the idea of opening a bill that had yet again been sent, putting copies of our emails in the envelope and returning the envelope to Sender.

This seemed to have some effect. In November we received a much reduced bill. Again I wrote to them, stating that as we had actually overpaid, Telefonica now owed us money, not the other way round. Five months later and the whole situation has not yet been sorted.

In the meantime we obtained our internet connection from the Internet Cafe, which has a licence to broadcast WiFi via small antennaes and USB slots. What we did not realise, though we should have, is that the Internet Cafe receives its signal from Telefonica. So, every time it rains, there are clouds, the trees have too many leaves, in fact, whenever there is weather, the connection remains dire.

We are now saving up to join a company called Wipzona, they have a good track record. Some of our friends have Wipzona (sounds fun to me!) and whenever they have a problem a technician appears within a few hours and sorts it out. They also have a postal address. And their charge for WiFi connection per month is 40 Euros. We just have save up to get the installation done.

For those people who are having problems with Telefonica, here is their address, which I finally obtained with great effort and I think should be on public record

Telefonica, Calle Granvia 28, Madrid. Hope this is of some help to someone.

Also, if you do move to Spain and want a mobile contract, try not to go for the big companies like Movistar (Telefonica again) and Orange/T Mobile. There are now more and more small companies that have excellent deals, like Viva (Euskatel combined with T Mobile) and will give you an operator and statements in your own language (English, German or Dutch). There are some others that work on similar lines. Shop around for your mobile provider. Ultimately we have found that using a mobile is actually cheaper than having a Telefonica land-line and a whole lot less frustrating.

Not for the Faint of Heart

Bet you thought this post would be about something horrible like bull-fighting, but no, it is about the perfectly ordinary daily activity of driving a car. Because I have to move from patient home to patient home, I have to drive a lot, so here is what I have learnt about driving in Spain so far.

PARKING THE CAR

It is perhaps no coincidence that the words 'aparcar' (to park) and 'abandonar' (to abandon) both start with an A, since a lot of Spanish drivers appear to be unable to distinguish between parking and abandoning their vehicles. We ourselves (as a joke initially) now mainly refer to parking the car as abandoning it. Cars are abandoned on pedestrian crossings, in bus stops, on street corners, on roundabouts and left double parked. Double parking is very common and most mornings I have to drive past at least half a dozen double parked cars in the main street of the nearest town to get to my early morning patient. These are not delivery vans, which could be expected at that time of the day, they are ordinary cars abandoned in order to purchase bread, newspapers, cigarettes etc. I have been told that double parking is allowed as long as it does not obstruct the flow of traffic, which of course it always does :) But, they do leave on their hazard warning lights, so you can at least see they are there

MOPEDS

There appear to be millions of those, all owned by 12-year old helmet-less riders. These weave in and out of the traffic with complete disregard for their own safety and the overwhelming confidence of the young that they cannot possibly die or injure themselves. Miraculously they tend to get away with it most of the time.

DIRECTION INDICATION

Que? Never heard of that in Spain. I am fairly sure it is not included in standard driving lessons, since no-one bothers to indicate. If you are behind a car and it does indicate, it is 99% certain that the car is being driven by a foreign driver. Never ever ever believe that the car that is indicating will indeed go where it indicates it will, because it most likely will just go straight or turn into the opposite direction to the way it indicates. After all the guessing game is far more interesting than ordinary driving, get used to it.

SPEED

Drive as fast as your car will let you. Drive as fast as possible up to junctions and be almost affronted if a car happens to be passing, since they are making you brake. That seems to be the general idea anyway - and I have now got used to trying to drive a bit further out from the curb so that when a car does push its nose into my path I will miss it (just) - as long as there is no traffic coming from the opposite lane at the same time. Or, and this is just as common, drive as if your car is made of porcelain, when you go over one of the innumerable speed-humps in the road, try to stop in second and then take off again. Do this over every speed hump and soon you will have a two kilometre queue behind you - but persevere and keep doing it anyway - just because you can :))

RAIN

We tend to get all our rain in one big 'lump'. Because most of the time it does not rain in our bit of Spain (even though we are on the plain) the roads cannot cope with rain. The drains do not work, which causes innumerable problems, particularly when driving. The surface is then greasy and very easy to lose control of the car. Drivers here are not told about the increase in stopping distance (something we tediously had to learn off by heart to pass the driving test in the UK) and don't take it into consideration. Great care on rainy days please, unless you like water skiing in your car. Most drivers here seem to love it.

PEDESTRIANS

Pedestrians have an absolute right of way in Spain, and even if they cross between two zebra crossings, you are supposed to give way to them :) Zebra crossings appear every 25 m or so, but most people ignore them, preferring to cross where they come out of the shop to get to their double-parked car. A lot of zebra-crossings are within a meter of the corner, which is very silly, as when you have just turned the corner you are still moving and there is the zebra crossing. So far I have managed to avoid hitting pedestrians, but more luck than driving skill. It is one thing I would change really, the position of the zebra crossings in relation to the corners of streets and roundabouts.

TRAFFIC WARDENS

Do not exist in Spain. If they did, they would need one wheelbarrow load of ticket books each day. Now there's an idea for raising some new taxation!!

No matter how dangerous the roads are though in Spain, apparently Portugal is even worse. My advice is, if you are a hesitant driver, do not drive in Spain. Never buy a new car in Spain or import one, a battered second hand car is fine. Most cars here get dents in them very quickly because of other car's doors being banged into them, parallel parked cars hitting them front and back, and general chaos on the road. Having said that, when they do have little scrapes, there does not seem to be the animosity I have witnessed on British road in similar situations. Mainly both drivers just look at the damage in amazement, and then go home, no exchange of insurance, no-one plans on having the damage repaired, no big deal really.